What's That Wobble? Oh, It's the Alignment.

When your car's steering gets wobbly it's time to get it into the shop and have it re-aligned.

Maybe it's time Canada did something along those lines. No, not just countervailing tariffs against American goods, something more significant. Perhaps we need to re-align our foreign and military policy.

Here's a good way to start. Let's order a new fighter jet for the Royal Canadian Air Force. Not the Lockheed F-35. Not even Boeing's F-18 Super Hornet. Let's go with the Swedish SAAB Gripen.

It's powerful, capable and, relatively speaking, affordable. Did I mention it's also Swedish?

With the Gripen we can still be America's loyal ally in North American air defence and we can meet our NATO obligations. What we couldn't be is a member of America's Aerial Foreign Legion. To get into that you have to buy the F-35 not so stealthy bomb truck. Unless you think Canada should be part of a first strike attack on China or Russia we really don't need the overpriced, under-performing F-35. And after Boeing's mugging of Bombardier we don't need them either.

I've Got an Idea to Rescue Justin From His Slump

Unfair or not, Justin Trudeau has taken a hit in the public's mind over his pretty clumsy trip to India. With JT et famille sporting an elaborate wardrobe of Bollywood's best fashions, the Indian press took the piss out of him pretty relentlessly. The local scribblers piled on.

Now Trudeau's approval numbers have dropped to within spitting distance of Tory leader, Andrew Scheer's. That's Andrew "Chuckles" Scheer people, a guy with all the charisma of a recycled catheter.

Maybe JT should consider upping his game. He could start by reversing himself and honouring a major campaign promise - electoral reform. I would like it even better if he went for electoral reform and pipelines but that's probably too much to ask. 

Trudeau promised that 2015 would be our last first-past-the-post election. In short order he reneged on that committment but his "can't" sounded more like "won't."  His claim that it wouldn't work here, even though it works elsewhere, was utterly unconvincing. We would even accept the preferential ballot option if he insisted. Just do it.

Or maybe Justin can change course. Maybe he should transform himself from just another free trade mule into a Renaissance Man befitting of his legendary father. (full disclosure. what follows is taken from an email I wrote to a fellow blogger this morning)

I have long argued that Canada needs some serious redecorating. Ever since George H.W. Bush started this “coalition of the willing” business, America has treated certain allies, Canada included, as its de facto Foreign Legion.  Desert Storm was, arguably, a good cause – driving Iraq out of Kuwait. Kosovo – meh. Afghanistan, well we all lost our minds at the 9/11 attacks streamed live into our livingrooms. We even bent the rules around Article 5 in that, 1) – the US never attacked by Afghanistan, and 2) – at the time the US invoked Article 5 it was not truly “under attack.” Picky, picky.

Where we lost the plot was when Bush/Cheney decided America should turn to invading Iraq rather than finishing what it had begun in Afghanistan. We knew from Hans Blix and his team of UN inspectors that Saddam wasn’t hiding a mountain of WMDs. It was pretty obvious that Washington thought it could roll in and basically grab the oil for US energy giants. Why was the only Iraqi ministry US forces secured the oil ministry?

The US decided to offload much of the Afghan mission to free up troops for Iraq and wanted a Foreign Legion. Rick “Big Cod” Hillier talked Paul Martin into taking the combat gig in Kandahar with a laughably token force of just 2,000 personnel, no more than half combat ready, to a province whose area and population mandated a combat force of between 20 to 30,000.  Martin didn’t know any better. Hillier probably did know, definitely should have known , but obviously didn’t tell his prime minister. It’s right there in the US Army/Marine Corps field manual, FM-3/24.

We lost our war in Afghanistan, the first military defeat in Canadian history. We lost badly. War is a state of armed conflict used to achieve a political outcome. That sought outcome was defined by Stephen Harper. We were there to stay. We would never cut and run. We would stay until the Taliban had been vanquished, effectively eradicated. We would make Afghanistan safe for democracy and a restoration of human rights (as they had once enjoyed under the country’s last king). We did none of those things. The Talibs are resurgent. The government is a hopelessly corrupt amalgamation of warlords from five main ethnic groups. Little boys’ bums are all the rage again and the struggle for women’s rights languishes. Meanwhile we definitely chose to cut and run.

Then along came Libya, a not so tidy war that Obama basically offloaded on Europe. Harper staged a victory fly past over Parliament Hill for that one even as Libya itself descended into an intractable, second phase civil war, this one substituting Islamist radicals for Gadhafi.

Syria? ISIS has been driven out, more or less, for now. It has been reduced from a rebellion to an insurgency to what is today essentially a terrorist movement. That’s the thing with these guys. They can morph from one state to another, often rather effortlessly, and that enables them to be flexible, mobile. They’ll be back, probably in another guise.

I have gone on at some length on these events because the world has become no safer for all of our post 9/11 misadventures. If anything we’ve demonstrated, repeatedly, that all the King’s Horses and all the King’s Men are no longer a sure path to a meaningful, lasting victory. We have all the watches but the bad guys have all the time.

We are returning to a more challenging era, one akin to the last Cold War, another win that we utterly failed to consolidate as we allowed triumphalism to get the better of us. That Doomsday Clock is now closer to midnight than it has been since the Cuban missile crisis. Around the world but particularly in Europe, Eurasia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the greater Asia Pacific region all the way to Australia, Russia and China, everyone is madly rearming.

America is being overtaken, economically, by China which is fast making inroads into the Middle East, Africa and even South America (whatever happened to the Monroe Doctrine anyway?). We have seen a number of these major power transitions over the centuries. At various times in the modern period the dominant spot belonged alternately to the Spanish, the French, the Dutch, the Brits and now the Americans. Before that came the Greeks, the Romans, the Mongols, etc.

Here’s the thing. History tells us that these transitions tend to be difficult. Two-thirds of them result in war. Is war in the offing between the U.S. and China? From what I’ve read over the past ten years, China’s military leadership is quietly bellicose.  At some level they want to exact revenge for China’s “century of humiliation” at the hands of us white folks – Opium Wars, etc.?  That thought came to mind when I found an essay in the Proceedings of the US Naval Institute wherin an acting service officer complained bitterly that China was overtaking the United States “without a fight” as though that was unthinkable.

It would be tempting to dismiss that view as the work of a hothead only his sentiments go deeper in that, all the way back to the Project for a New American Century, the neo-cons (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith, Perle, Wolfowitz, Libby et al)  developed an “over my dead body” policy prescription that was subsequently embodied in the Bush Doctrine. That doctrine provided that America reserved the right to institute pre-emptive war against any nation or group of nations that challenged America’s economic and military domination.  Seriously, look it up.

The backbone of American airpower today and into the future are its stealth warplanes, the F-22 and F-35. Those are not dual purpose aircraft. They’re not defence oriented. There are simply too few F-22s to handle the job and the F-35 has a series of deficiencies that make it marginal in the air defence role. They are primarily offensive weapons designed to “take the fight to the enemy” and not just any garden variety enemy either.  They are purpose built to operate in heavily defended, hostile airspace.  One American general called the F-35 his “kick in the front door” weapon. Do you remember that the Japanese ran a dress rehearsal of their Pearl Harbour attack to test their shallow-draught Long Lance torpedoes in an appropriate anchorage? The USAF staged a similar “proof of concept” exercise called Operation Chimichanga that simulated a stealth first strike attack on China. Do you the Chinese maybe didn’t hear about that?

Whether it’s North Korea or the South China Sea or maybe just two countries getting into each other’s faces, this is not a very placid time. For Canada, however, it may be a time to begin loosening the ties that bind us to American foreign and military policy, perhaps by aligning Canadian  policy more directly with our western European allies. It doesn’t mean we won’t pick up the phone when Washington calls but maybe just not on the first or even the twenty-first ring.

If you follow this global rearmament business as I do you’re drawn to the conclusion that the world has absolutely no shortage of state of the art weaponry. State of the art everything. Hell even the city state of Singapore has six modern and very capable submarines.

How about we zig where everyone else chooses to zag by decoupling ourselves from Washington and restoring our credibility as an honest broker nation? Communications between rival nations (at all levels) are apt to become more strained in this overheated and armed-to-the-teeth milieu that has become our new reality. The need for a trustworthy intermediary may be greater now than ever before in Canadian history. It's a job suitable for the nation that gave the world the concept of peacekeeping, an initiative that earned Mike Pearson the Nobel Peace Prize.

Get 'Em While They're Still Not Entirely Obsolete.

If this thing works, they won't have to fire a round to deal a severe blow to Western military forces.

Russia says it will begin testing a new photonic radar system next year that will detect any aircraft, stealthy or not, at ranges perhaps up to 400 miles.

It's the "next generation" of radar technology, one that it's believed conventional stealth technology cannot defeat. The system is built around laser pulses in lieu of standard electro-magnetic radiation. The prototype technology was produced by a team of researchers in Italy a few years ago. Some have labelled it "quantum radar."

The Russians, it seems, picked up on the early research and ran with it.  Russia claims its own next generation fighter (Gen 6) will bristle with stealth defeating, very long range technologies including photonics and a new generation of optical sensors.

These systems, if they prove practical, may leave the West with all of its hyper-expensive eggs in one rapidly fraying basket.  For what is the F-35 when stripped of its cloak of invisibility? It could be very pricey dead meat.

There's a one-two punch in this, the development of VLRAAM, very long range air to air missiles. Both Russia and China are developing air launched, long range missiles designed to take down the F-35's essential support aircraft - aerial refueling tankers and long-range radar platforms (AWACS) which are big, slow, cumbersome and easily detectable at great distances.  Take those down and the F-35 could be, at best, a one-mission warplane.

That's the Achilles' Heel of a system that takes 20 years to develop, test, fix, and deploy. It gives the other side all sorts of time to analyze your technology, steal your secrets and develop their own, often much less costly, counter-technologies.

Since primitive men first picked up sticks, there has never been a weapon that wasn't neutralized or rendered obsolete in due course.  For some reason we imagined that didn't apply to the porcine F-35.

The Smart Move - Yes, From the Trudeau Government at That.

The federal government will order 18 F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets from Boeing to bridge the gap while it awaits the next wave of new generation fighters for the Royal Canadian Air Force. They're following an idea that Australia implemented a couple of years ago.

Most of America's allies are going for Lockheed's troubled F-35 which, by the time it is fully cleared for service, will be 20-years old. Over those two decades many of its supposed stealth secrets have been hacked by the very adversaries it is designed to attack. That has assisted them in the development of technologies to defeat the F-35's technology while giving them a leg up on constructing and deploying their own stealth fighter aircraft. To this Lockheed would say that the Russian and Chinese stealth aircraft aren't as good as America's. They could be right but they don't have to be nearly as good when used in defensive roles supported by their own advanced ground detection and missile systems.

The Americans are all too aware of the F-35's limitations and vulnerabilities which is why US naval and air force commanders are pressing for the early development of new, 6th generation aircraft to replace Lockheed's offering even before it achieves full operational status.

Another Nail in the F-35's Coffin

Update: Pentagon now rethinking F-35 buy.  See below

Another damning report on the F-35 and, once again, it's from the website War is Boring that last week broke the leaked test pilot report showing that the Joint Strike Fighter was dead meat in dogfighting a 30-year old F-16.

Lockheed's fallback position, echoed by the US Air Force, is that the F-35 doesn't need to be a dogfighter because it will destroy any fighter foolish enough to come at it from long range.  The pitch goes that the attacker will be destroyed before he knows the F-35 is even there.  It's a pitch that has been met with plenty of skepticism.

As critics have been saying for years, the whole F-35 invisibility claim is based on a limited, frontal aspect only, stealth cloaking designed to defeat X-band radars.  There are other bands of radar, including L-band, against which it doesn't work very well at all.  Then there are other non-radar sensors - infrared, optical. Each has its strengths and its limitations. That's why the engineering wizards in Moscow and Beijing came up with "sensor fusion" which is basically combining two or more sensor modes in the defending aircraft and also in the missile seekers.

The idea is that the defending aircraft will use sensor fusion to detect the American stealth bomber at long to medium-range and then launch a missile toward the target.  The missile, as it gets close enough, will lock up the target with its onboard seekers and that should be it.

That puts the F-35 pilot in a dilemma.  The JSF warning systems will detect the launch of the defender's missiles.  The F-35 pilot has two choices - he can remain on course hoping that his frontal-aspect stealth will save the day or he can begin evasive maneuvering to try to defeat the missile but only at the cost of completely losing his stealth cloaking (it ain't invisible except from the front, remember?).

And now, when it comes to air to air combat, radar's day may be drawing to a close.

Here's the latest from War is Boring:

...the F-35 does have a high-tech radar, high-fidelity cameras and other advanced gear that can detect airplanes. But foremost, Lockheed optimized these sensors for spotting targets on the ground — and at relatively short distances.

The F-35 can see great. It just can’t see all that great into the air. At least not compared to modern Chinese- and Russian-made jets — the planes the F-35 is most likely to face in battle in some future war.

...The latest Russian radars, such as the one on the new Sukhoi Su-35, at least match the JSF’s APG-81, according to data compiled by Carlo Kopp at Air Power Australia.

While the specific details remain secret, Kopp estimates the APG-81 can detect an aircraft with a radar cross-section of three square meters—a MiG-29, for example—just over 100 miles away. Russian radar-maker Tikhomirov claims the Su-35’s Irbis-E can spot a similar-size target at greater than twicethat distance.

But it’s possible radar range is irrelevant. In an aerial battle between stealthy jets — with each side trying to stay undetected as long as possible — it’s likely that none of the opposing pilots would even want to activate their radars at all. That’s because most fighters carry gear that can sense radar waves and pinpoint their origins.

Instead, modern planes in a high-tech war would probably rely on their undetectable, “passive” infrared sensors to locate each other in the air. The F-35, Su-35, Russian T-50 and Chinese J-20 all possess IR sensors that look for heat.

Here's the thing.  Lockheed as much as admitted that aerial combat has moved into the infra-red era when it quietly retrofitted the F-35 with an IR system of its own. It's a pop-up unit.  It can't be out and on all the time or it would defeat the stealth cloaking.  So, like a submarine's periscope, the pilot has to raise the IR unit when he wants to use it. Worst of all, when it comes to infrared, the F-35 is a blazing torch in the sky.

True, Lockheed designed the JSF’s fuel tanks to help sop up some of the extra thermal energy the plane generates. But take a look at the F-35’s engine nozzle. It’s round. Highly stealthy planes such as America’s B-2 bomber and F-22 fighter both boast flat engine nozzles that spread out their exhaust plumes, cutting back on the telltale IR signature.

Even with its radar off, an F-35 could struggle to hide from enemy planes — to say nothing of enemy forces on the ground. Consider all those long-wavelength, low-band radars that Russia, China and Iran are building right next to potential hotspots in Europe, East Asia and the Middle East.

“You can’t stealthify against long-wavelength radars,” says Pierre Sprey, an experienced engineer who worked on both the F-16 and the A-10 ground attack plane.

These giant arrays can detect tiny objects at great distances. Tehran insists its Ghadir radar can spot jets more than 300 miles away. Russian arms-dealer Rosoboronexport claims the Rezonans-NE can detect stealth planes nearly 750 miles distant.

The Russians and Chinese were probably worried when the F-22 Raptor emerged followed by its "mini-me" the F-35 light bomber. They figured out the Lockheed stealth technology was intended to defeat X-band radars. Instead of trying to develop a better radar in the X-band, they realized there were all sorts of other ways to skin this cat and why not grab as many of those as you can.  And so they did. Their development effort has been enormously helped by the years of delays in F-35 development and testing.

Years ago on this blog I wrote that Canada shouldn't even consider buying the F-35 without, at a minimum, Lockheed's money back guarantee that the F-35's stealth would be effective for at least 10-years.  That only made sense given what F-35 operators have to give up in exchange for this vaunted stealth cloaking - range, payload, agility, speed; everything you need in a modern warplane.  To give up all those qualities so that you can buy a handful of airplanes on the gimmicky stealth cloaking pitch without that sort of guarantee would be irresponsible, reckless, borderline insane.

Update:

The web site Defence One reports that the Pentagon may be having second thoughts about its long-standing plan to buy more than 2,400 F-35s.

On Thursday morning, Gen. Joseph Dunford, the Marine Corps commandant nominated to become the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the F-35 buying plan is under review.

“Given the evolving defense strategy and the latest Defense Planning Guidance, we are presently taking the newest strategic foundation and analyzing whether 2,443 aircraft is the correct number,” Dunford wrote in response to questions asked by the committee in advance of his hearing Thursday. “Until the analysis is complete, we need to pursue the current scheduled quantity buy to preclude creating an overall near-term tactical fighter shortfall.”

Dunford’s comments come one week after Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the outgoing JCSchairman, warned in a new National Military Strategy that the military might need to rethink and reorganize for the hybrid wars of the future.

...Many experts believed the Pentagon’s vision of a fleet of 2,443 Lockheed Martin F-35s was a pipe dream — but also that the program was likely stable for at least 15 to 20 years of its planned three-decade procurement period.

“I don’t think anybody on Wall Street would be surprised if [the Defense Department] starts to back away from that number just because I don’t think anybody really gave Lockheed Martin or the subcontractors on the program full credit for the total buy,” Byron Callan, a defense analyst with Capital Alpha Partners said.

“That said, we’re still probably going to get to a build rate of 150 [aircraft] per year total, at least for the early part of the decade,” he said. “Then the real question is what happens beyond that.

Here's the thing.  Lockheed absolutely needs that full American order plus its still soft international orders in order to get the F-35 cost out of the stratosphere. Recently Lockheed has been pressing America's allies to finalize contracts for the F-35.  

There's a term for what threatens the entire F-35 programme.  It's called the "death spiral." It describes a scenario in which costs continually go up as orders are cancelled or reduced.  Higher costs result in fewer orders causing higher costs resulting in fewer orders, on and on and on until no one can afford Lockheed's light bomber.  Even the US Air Force general in charge of the F-35 project uses the term death spiral and admits its a real concern. General Chris Bogdan (who I think of as "skippy") has long warned that a death spiral could be the fate that awaits the F-35 if Lockheed and the engine maker, Pratt & Whitney, don't get quality up and price down.

The US Navy has shown a remarkable lack of enthusiasm for the F-35 and some US Air Force brass already have been clamouring for a new airplane to replace the JSF.

What this means for Canada.

We're in a position unique to smaller air forces.  It's an "all the eggs in one basket" scenario.  If the F-35 project goes down, our air force could be left in a very bad way.  If a successor is rushed into development that answers all the F-35's shortcomings and vulnerabilities, our budget will already be blown on the JSF.

Because of Canada's unique circumstances we really have to start over - from scratch, square one.  Other nations' requirements, including America's, have never been less relevant.  Putin is militarizing the Arctic.  We face a potentially hostile presence to the north such as we've never known.  At the very least that has to factor into our defence policy, including the warplane we need for our territorial defence.  The F-35 never has been that airplane.

It could be in our best interests to step back and go for an updated version of a proven fighter to get us through the next twenty years and wait while the wizardry the F-35 promised but failed to deliver matures into something real and usable.  Boeing has new, stealthier and more capable versions of the F-18 and F-15 just waiting in the wings.  Both are very multi-role capable and suitable to our needs in our vast and sparsely populated far north.  There's also Russia's Su-35 but I'm not sure Vlad would be happy seeing Canada deploy them along our contested frontier.  Washington might not be too keen on that either.

What's wrong with the United States being the "stealth partner" in the allied air armada?  The stealth capability is primarily intended for the first few days of a major air war when it will be needed to enter heavily defended airspace and take down an adversaries air defences.  That's a fine role for the United States Air Force.  With a more dependable, more conventional and genuinely multi-role force, we can help with the heavy lifting after the brief, stealth campaign.

The way we're going, with the Conservatives just waiting to buy the F-35, just doesn't make any sense.  None at all.

Is It Time to Skewer Harper With the F-35 Fiasco?

Probably the question should be whether Mulcair or Trudeau have the political acumen to bloody Stephen Harper over his blunders and deceit in Canada's F-35 saga.

We know now that Harper's obsessive drive for a single source procurement on a "buy before you fly basis" was insanely reckless.  Harper owes a profound debt of gratitude to the parliamentary budget officer and the auditor general for stopping him cold in his tracks before he could ink a deal for 65 of these hyper-costly and deeply flawed airplanes.

Harper, with his early insistence that no competitive fly off was necessary, came awfully close to saddling Canada's air force with a terrible airplane for decades to come.

Harper needs to be called out on the floor of the Commons for what he tried to do, what he very nearly did and what would have befallen the defence of Canada had he not been derailed by Michael Ferguson and Kevin Page.

At the very least Mulcair and Trudeau should extract a commitment from Harper that there will be a full, open and competitive fly-off of every fighter on the market that can perform the full range of multi-role fighters - close support, tactical bombing, air combat and air defence/interception.  Invite Lockheed to bring their F-35 if they dare and let us see how it goes, head to head, against Rafale, Eurofighter, Griffen, Super Hornet and the latest F-15.  That would probably be the last we would hear from Lockheed which would send a clear message to every other American ally signing up for the F-35.

The Little Bomber That Couldn't

F-35 "Fatso"

The myth of the F-35 as an all purpose, multi-role fighter imploded this past week with the leak of a report on flight tests showing that it couldn't hold its own, much less defeat a decades old F-16 in air combat maneuvering.  To put it bluntly, the old (and cheap) F-16 waxed the F-35's tail.

When the specs were written for the F-35 one of the requirements was that it had to maneuver at least better than the venerable F-16 it was intended to replace. It's not the first time the F-35 has come up short - or long in its case.  Among others, it also failed to meet its landing and take off distance requirements.  So the US Air Force rewrote the specs to reflect what the F-35 could do and changed its F to a C-minus with the stroke of a pen. It also has a pretty worrisome weight problem.  At one point Lockheed tried to trim the plane down by removing its onboard fire suppression system not the best solution for an airplane where the fuel tanks are wrapped around its oh-so-hot engine.  One lucky hit by some illiterate farmboy with a Korean War vintage assault rifle and - kaboom.

Caught with their pants down, Lockheed and the US Air Force, while admitting that the leaked report was genuine and the F-35 did indeed fail its air combat test, chimed in with a duet about how the dismal report wasn't the whole story.  Truer words were never spoken just not quite in the same way that the manufacturer and the American air force types intended.

What the damning report shows and what Lockheed and the F-35 boosters are now going to have to admit is that their claim that the F-35 is a multi-role fighter is a ruse, seemingly intended to win foreign orders.  The CF-18 that Trudeau bought for the air force is a genuine, multi-role fighter.  It can do a respectable job at ground attack (bombing), close support (helping troops on the ground - bombing and strafing), air to air combat (dogfighting), patrol and interception (air defence).

The F-35 is no multi-role strike fighter.  It's a somewhat stealthy, light attack bomber.  It's designed to carry two bombs to a high-value target (worthy of the F-35's gold plated price tag) and then get out however it can.

Close support?  Not a chance.  That role requires loiter time.  The supporting fighter has to arrive on station, communicate with the troops who need help, identify and try to take out the bad guys, and then hang around for a while in case there are more enemies lying in wait.  It has to carry enough gear to make multiple runs on enemy positions.  And - here's the big one - it has to be able to take a few hits and survive to make it home.  The F-35 is fuel limited.  Hanging around to help out would be a problem.  Then there's the "Pinto" problem of the fuel tanks wrapped around the engine that make ground fire a much more serious threat.  The F-35 is one hot airplane.  Its engine generates an enormous heat plume, ideal for a Russian or Chinese or ISIS soldier with a shoulder-launched, infrared missile just looking for something to shoot down.  Oh yeah, that engine? There's just the one.  When you lose one engine to ground fire and one is all you have you had better hope those friendly troops can get to you before the bad guys do. And if all that wasn't enough, there's the small matter of cost.  This is one super expensive airplane to put at such significant risk.

Patrol and interception, the air defence mission?  I think it was some air force type that came up with the term MTBF which stands for mean time between failures. It's based on the idea that equipment eventually breaks down and the longer you run it, the more likely it is to fail.  We used to require 4-engines on passenger jets crossing the Atlantic. Why?  MTBF, that's why.  Multiple engines provide redundancy which comes in really handy if one craps out.  MTBF takes on a whole new dimension when it comes to a single engine warplane hundreds of miles from home up in the Arctic in February.  Another problem is speed. Once a suspect aircraft is detected, you need to get an interceptor there as quickly as possible.  Gives the target less chance to launch a salvo of long range cruise missiles and such.  Even clean, with no long range fuel tanks or missiles to slow it down, the F-35 lacks "supercruise."  That's the ability to fly at supersonic speeds without having to use the fuel-guzzling afterburner.  It can't go supercruise fast because it's fat - really, really fat. It's fat because, when Lockheed was chosen to build it, they had to build three versions, one of which was the vertical lift model for the US Marines and the Royal Navy.  It takes space to house that extra engine and that made the F-35 a very wide, high drag airplane (see the top photo).  Put all of these shortcomings together and the F-35 would seem to be a very poor pick for the air defence mission.

Which brings us to the glamour stuff, the 'turn and burn' fighter role, dogfighting.  When it comes to the aerial furball, the US Air Force's own leaked tests show the F-35 simply cannot hold its own even against a vintage F-16.  It seemed to take even the pilots by surprise at how easy it was for the F-16 to get on the F-35's tail and stay there.

The Air Force brass kind of gulped and then said that report doesn't tell the whole story.  True enough.  In reality, the F-35 won't have to contend with F-16s. The adversaries it will confront will be far deadlier than the F-16.  It will have to deal with aircraft such as the super nimble Sukhoi Su-35; Russia's agile stealth air superiority fighter, the PAK50; and China's Su-30s and its stealth fighters, the J-20 and J-31.

Since the F-35 is plainly not an air defence fighter, or a close support fighter, or an air superiority fighter, there's just one mission left - light attack bomber.  The reason the F-35 design sacrifices speed, range, payload and agility typical of genuine fighters is because it is intended to bomb high-value targets in heavily defended enemy territory.  That's what the stealth cloaking is all about.

The F-35 is intended to defeat conventional x-band radars found on older fighters.  It has frontal-aspect cloaking.  Scanned from other aspects - the sides, above, below - the F-35 is not very stealthy at all.  The F-35 is designed to go straight to its target, drop its bombs, and go straight back out again via the shortest route possible before hostile fighters can engage it.  Okay, what's wrong with this picture?

For starters, F-35 operators will announce their presence well in advance. Because of the range limitations, the F-35 will require its support aircraft, especially its air refueling tankers to come far forward where they'll be readily detected. The little bombers need to top up on the way in and again once they get out. You see those tankers at the edge of your airspace, you've got time to get your defending fighters in the air to meet the attackers.  You can also assign fighters to destroy the vulnerable tankers ensuring those F-35s, even if they do reach their target, will never get back to their base.  There's the first Achilles' Heel.

The obvious intended adversaries, Russia and China, have made good use of the inordinate delays in the F-35 development to do plenty of developing of their own.  As Edward Snowden revealed, the Chinese managed to hack a lot of the secrets of the F-35 design right out of the contractors' computers.  Additional secrets were obtained from the Lockheed RQ-170 stealth drone that was brought down, seemingly intact, by Iran.  That included the onboard stealth cloaking electronics and the stealth coatings from the skin of the drone.

Their time and effort seems to have paid off.  They developed work-arounds. They focused on the limitations of the American stealth technology and its weaknesses.  This resulted in what's called "sensor fusion" - the combination of sensor technologies such as L-band radar together with long-range infrared and optical sensors.  Slaved together via computers what was invisible is now detectable sufficiently well to permit not just detection but tracking and targeting.  Fighter interception is again viable and when fighters can find the F-35, the US Air Force's playbook goes out the window.  Achilles Heel numero dos.

Under attack the F-35 will have little choice but to maneuver - to turn and climb and dive - and once it has to turn its stealth cloaking is simply gone.  It can try to use its onboard missiles (all - i.e.both - of them) to bring down its attackers but it probably won't be able to get enough of them for it to avoid the very dogfight it lost to the F-16.  It has a gun but, as the test showed, it can't move its nose fast enough to get on target.  Dogfighting also consumes a crazy amount of what the F-35 has in such limited supply - fuel.  Because of its high drag it's going to be dependent on its afterburner and when the guy sitting behind you has infrared missiles your day is pretty much over.  Achilles Heel nummer Drei

Wonder Why This Is the Only Picture Showing How Much
The Pilot Sees from Behind?

As for the Russians, they have what's considered to be the world's best surface to air missile systems - the S-300 and the even newer S-400 which the Russkies claim is "stealth ready."  The 400 was purpose built to defend high value Russian targets from stealth attack.

The sad truth is that the F-35 was designed for conditions as they were when the order was placed.  You might remember that time as pre-9/11.  One thing those brilliant designers never factored in was that its secrets might be hacked right out of their own computers or turned over to the bad guys when that super secret drone was force landed. They never factored in 'sensor fusion' or that the F-35 might have to go up against an adversary with its own stealth warplanes. The F-35 was supposed to have a world-beating technological edge far into the future. There was simply no other way to justify the cost or its operational shortcomings.  All of those assumptions now stand unraveled.

Defrocked, the F-35 appears awfully prototypical.  It's like a technology demonstrator where combat essential qualities such as range, payload, speed (remember, no supercruise) and agility have been sacrificed for the sake of supposed stealth cloaking that is frontal-aspect only. It's sort of a "look what I can do, dad" airplane that's hard to take seriously.

Lockheed and the US Air Force continue to dismiss the F-35s critics even as those critics' claims keep getting proven right.  Let's recap what we now know about this would-be multi-role fighter.

Close support:  too costly to be worth the risk, insufficient loiter time, too vulnerable to ground fire and shoulder-launched IR missiles.

Air defence:  too slow (no supercruise), inadequate range, single engine vulnerability.

Air combat: a dead duck - underpowered, lack of fuel, inadequate turn and climb rate, terrible rear visibility, a heat-seeking missile's dream date.

It's not a fighter.  It just can't do fighter things.  It's a light attack bomber purpose built to attack countries with relatively sophisticated air defences which would be China, Russia, Iran, Britain, France, maybe Israel - as they were back in the Year of Our Lord, 2000.

This is a warplane that makes absolutely zero sense for Canada.  Even the US Navy isn't keen on buying it and the US Air Force is clamoring for quick development of a "sixth generation" fighter to replace the F-35.  The goddamned thing is years away from entering service and they're already yelling "next." I think we should take that as a clear warning. Maybe the Americans can afford to move on but if we buy it we can't.  It will drain our defence budget even if it does spend most of its time idle undergoing maintenance in our hangars.

Jeez, If I Buy It Will You Let Me Sit In It?

Lockheed, You Blew It. Start Over, Do It Right.

For all the wholly deserved criticism of the F-35 light attack bomber, there are some things that Lockheed and its partners got right.  What they didn't get right was the airplane itself.

The Brits used to operate an aircraft carrier, HMS Invincible.  By American carrier standards the British ship had undersized elevators - the hydraulic platforms that move aircraft between the hangar deck and the flight deck. Lockheed designers had that problem in mind when they designed the F-35 which is why it's kind of short, a little stubby even.  Britain's new carriers have larger elevators but, no matter, the design is done.

Lockheed designers knew that they had to come up with an airframe that would accommodate three variants; a basic, land-based version for the air force, a strengthened version for the navy, and a VSTOL or vertical landing/short take off version for the US Marine Corps and the Royal Navy.

The VSTOL version packs a vertical lift engine in addition to the standard flight engine in that airframe.  That's why the F-35 is a bit squat, tubby.  And because it's such a wide brick it carries a big drag penalty which leaves it incapable of achieving the jet fighter sine qua non, supercruise.  It'll go moderately fast but only when its engine is in fuel-guzzling afterburner.  In other words, unlike the competition it won't go fast very far.  Unfortunately, because there's only one basic airframe design, the drag penalty dictated by the Marines' VSTOL variant also degrades the air force and naval versions.

All in all, the F-35 is a horribly compromised design.  It has a serious weight problem that has left it unable to meet the specified landing and takeoff requirements.  The answer was to move the goal posts, lower the standards.  So desperate was Lockheed to "make weight" that at one point the company removed the internal fire suppression system.  If there was ever a plane that needed that protection, it's the F-35.

In addition to the weight problem, the F-35 has a fire problem, several in fact. There's been an engine fire problem that's believed to have been caused by turbine blades coming into contact with the duct shroud.  In order to give the aircraft at least passable range, it was necessary to install innovative fuel bladders in the wings, fuselage and even wrapped around the engine.  This leaves the F-35 vulnerable to fire and explosions from lightning strikes which is why it's not allowed to fly near storms.  A recent report from the US Secretary of Defense faulted the fuel system as also very vulnerable to ground fire.  A stray bullet could be enough to make the jet go BOOM.  That might limit your enthusiasm for risking the world's most expensive warplane down in the weeds supporting friendly troops against outfits like the Taliban.

There are other problems, myriad issues.  The F-35 has a low altitude heat problem.  It just can't cool itself which leaves it easier to detect and attack by modern infra-red systems.  At higher speeds, if the F-35 has to maneuver quickly to avoid an attacker or a missile, it can develop wing-drop which means the loss of controlled flight which could turn the mega-million dollar warplane into the world's most expensive lawn dart.  I could go on but I think you get the picture of an airplane with some very serious, sometimes intractable problems.

But still ...we're hearing hints of magical systems the F-35 will bring to the battlefield including a cyber-warfare pod that's apparently designed to transmit powerful viruses into an enemy's air defence computers.  It's also reported to have a variety of novel sensing, targeting and communication systems.  Taken together these wonders of wizardry are said to redeem the F-35 despite its many other flaws.

The illogic to this argument is that it ties these electronic warfare systems to a very compromised airframe with serious performance issues.  Why, if they're that good can they not simply be installed in a better airplane, one that is more capable and survivable than the F-35?  Why not retrofit them to an upgraded, twin-engine, long range, high speed and very maneuverable airplane, something like a modernized F-22?

There are some F-35 customers who will want to stick with the airplane, warts and all.  Israel, for example, needs it soon if it is to attack Iran.  The Marines, Royal Navy and other small carrier forces still need the VSTOL version, the F-35B, so those orders would remain valid.  The US Air Force will still want some of the A-models just as the US Navy will still need some of the navalized, C-models.  Yet both services are already clamoring for a new, 6th generation fighter (the very sort of thing I'm suggesting).

Recognizing the F-35's many flaws isn't going to make it one bit better or worse. It's not going to harm "the programme."  It's just that, given the chance to build a new design incorporating the magical electronic systems without the compromises required for the "one size fits all" joint strike fighter, Lockheed's designers would come up with something that looked a lot different than the F-35.

The F-35 - Bait & Switch - the Verdict Is In

It's gradually becoming apparent why countries buying the F-35 don't get a chance to flight test it first, especially up against its competitors.  The "why" is because it's less of a multi-role jet fighter than we've been told, a lot less.

The United States Air Force wants the F-35 bad, real bad.  The generals in blue want it so bad that they're doing everything possible to get rid of their current, close support aircraft, the A-10.

Cheap, Effective, but Definitely Not Sexy

The troops on the ground love the A-10, especially when they're pinned down in firefights with insurgents.  The A-10 can go slow enough that the pilot can see what's going on below.  It can carry a seemingly limitless load of cannon rounds, rockets and bombs.  It can loiter overhead a good long time and it's heavily armoured with twin engine redundancy which means it won't be readily driven off or shot down by hostile ground fire.

Did I mention the A-10 is slow?  Yeah and that's quite a problem for the USAF brass.  They like fast and sexy and the A-10 is definitely neither.  The A-10 is also a small fraction of the cost of the F-35 both on purchase price and costs to operate.  The F-35 is really, really, really expensive and, unlike the venerable A-10, it will never do what was promised.

The Air Force types, however, insist the F-35 can perform the close support role and the A-10 should be retired.  Except they don't mean it.  They're lying. They're gaming the system.

What the USAF brass have in mind emerged over the past week.  They want to get the full load of F-35s, around 1,700 of them, and then - wait for it - they would like to look at another warplane, something a lot like a new A-10, for the close support role, the ground pounding stuff.

They're going to pitch the F-35 as the perfect jet for defending the troops but it's not and for a lot of reasons.  The F-35 can't loiter over friendly troops, it doesn't have the fuel.  It can't carry the weapon load of an A-10 that gives both pilots and ground troops the options they need to survive.  It isn't armoured.  A hostile machine gun, well aimed, could open the F-35 like a can of soup.  The hot section of the F-35, the exhaust, is ridiculously hot, the perfect target for a shoulder-launched infrared missile (of which the Russians and Chinese have scads).  And, did I mention the F-35 has just the one engine?  No dual engine survivability which is bad news if you've just been stitched up by ground fire. One hit and your day could be over.  Oh yeah, there's that other thing - cost.  The F-35 just costs too damned much to be sacrificing them in support of ground troops.

The United States Air Force doesn't have the F-35 in mind for close support or, for that matter, other traditional fighter missions.  That claim was put to the lie this week when the generals started talking about getting their F-35s and then looking at cheap alternatives to replace the A-10.  In other words they want the F-35s and then a new, far cheaper replacement for the A-10.  All this business about the F-35 doing the close support mission (or, for that matter, air superiority), they're just pulling your chain.

For smaller nations like Canada this is pretty important.  We probably won't want to buy another fleet of warplanes to do what the F-35 really shouldn't be doing or simply can't do. In fact, the F-35 only does a couple of things well.  One of them is opening an attack on a country with sophisticated air defences which really comes down to two countries, Russia and China.

So, if the ground support mission is out what about aerial combat, dogfighting? Well the head of USAF Air Combat Command, General Mike Hostage, has said that any F-35 pilot who finds himself in a dogfight either did something very wrong or is just plain unlucky.  How's that for a confidence builder?

There's a lot to what general Hostage said.  If the F-35 gets caught in a dogfight the pilot did something wrong or is plain unlucky.  In other words, the F-35 isn't a dogfighter.  It's not intended to become engaged in a maneuvering fight with enemy fighters.  Should that happen the pilot did something wrong, he failed to evade the enemy's fighters.

In other words, the F-35 isn't really supposed to operate defensively in circumstances where the other side has the initiative and exercises control of the fight.  When the prospective adversary (Russia or China, your pick) has a large supply of fast, long range fighters that can out run, out turn and out climb the F-35 then the general is right.  If you get caught, your luck has run out.  Sounds like a hell of a fighter, doesn't it?

So we're getting glimpses of problems suggesting the F-35 isn't a close support strike fighter and it's not an air defence fighter or an air superiority fighter and it isn't a long-range, high-speed anything.  It is what it is, a light attack bomber.

In other F-35 news, another report from the Secretary of Defense detailing more problems with the F-35 development.  To paraphrase, the F-35 project team are cooking the books and salting the mine.  A few gems.  So far, two flights a week - maximum. Testing is being put off, deficiencies left uncorrected.  The fuel tank system that fills the wings and surrounds the engine is at "significant risk of catastrophic fire and explosion in combat" (that sounds "unlucky" alright ). Doesn't sound like the F-35 will fare too well where it could be exposed to hostile ground fire. It go BOOM! Verdict - the close support mission is out, no way.

Then there's the wing drop problem.  Turning at higher speeds causes "uncommanded wing drop" meaning the pilot gets to experience uncontrolled flight.  The report finds that wing drop can result in crashes and an inability to outmaneuver attacking fighters or their missiles (more "unlucky").  The saving grace is that you only have to worry about becoming unlucky twice a week because the airplane won't fly more than that.  Verdict - it ain't no dogfighter.

One notation that should send defence planners hackles up accuses Air Force brass of hiding today's failures while building a huge future cost "bow wave." In other words, the soaking you get when you buy the F-35 is just for starters.

By continuing to defer critical testing, crucial fixes, and promised capabilities, the JSF Program Office achieves two purposes essential for continued congressional funding: 1) creating the appearance of an “on-track” program, and 2) transferring to the distant out-years the major cost overruns incurred by today’s test failures and their resultant redesign and fleetwide retrofit expenses.

The expense of the deferred test flight hours is only the tip of the iceberg. Far more expensive are the redesign and fleetwide retrofit costs resulting from the shortcomings that inevitably emerge during those deferred flight tests. The longer those tests are deferred and the more we ramp up production now, the more expensive retrofits will be necessary for the larger fleet of flawed F-35s.

Verdict - what we know of the F-35's bloated price tag is just for starters and the actual costs are just going to keep going up while the actual performance goes steadily down.  If you can bear to read even more about the F-35's deficiencies and failures and how the US Air Force and Congress are greasing the wheels to keep this aircraft alive, here's a useful summary of the Defense Department report.

But what about the "fifth generation" F-35's vaunted stealth cloaking?  Over to Aviation Week's Bill Sweetman who points out that the effectiveness of stealth systems is being rapidly compromised.

Counterstealth technologies, intended to reduce the effectiveness of radar cross-section (RCS) reduction measures, are proliferating worldwide. Since 2013, multiple new programs have been revealed, producers of radar and infrared search and track (IRST) systems have been more ready to claim counterstealth capability, and some operators—notably the U.S. Navy—have openly conceded that stealth technology is being challenged.

These new systems are designed from the outset for sensor fusion—when different sensors detect and track the same target, the track and identification data are merged automatically. This is intended to overcome a critical problem in engaging stealth targets: Even if the target is detected, the “kill chain” by which a target is tracked, identified and engaged by a weapon can still be broken if any sensor in the chain cannot pick the target up.

It's a lengthy and technical article but the gist is that counter-stealth technology has made considerable advances undermining the effectiveness of the supposed stealth invincibility.

A final observation.  The F-35 is being sold as a breakthrough, a new warfare weapon system.  It doesn't need to be a dogfighter or a ground pounder or an interceptor.  It brings a new paradigm to aerial warfare.  To me it sounds like the sort of delusional thinking you can get sometimes from the military types.  I recall when the now-legendary F-4 Phantom entered service.  It came armed with radar and heat-seeking missiles but no gun.  The navy proclaimed that no gun was needed, the era of dogfighting was over.  Missiles would do that job now. They were wrong and American pilots found themselves in combat against Russian built Migs over North Vietnam, dogfighting with no gun.  Oopsie!  That changed quickly enough.  They hastily fitted a gun to the F-4, established the Naval Fighter Weapons School (Top Gun) and started running navy pilots through air combat (dogfighting) training.

Top US Navy Admiral Warns F-35 Stealth Cloaking May Be Overrated.

The US Navy's Chief of Naval Operations is looking for a strike fighter and he's looking well beyond the F-35.

Admiral Jon Greenert told a Washington audience last week that the F-35's vaunted stealth cloaking, the magical advantage for which it sacrifices speed, agility, range and payload, "may be overrated."


"What does that next strike fighter look like?" Greenert asked the packed forum. "I'm not sure it's manned, don't know that it is. You can only go so fast, and you know that stealth may be overrated. ... Let's face it, if something moves fast through the air, disrupts molecules and puts out heat — I don't care how cool the engine can be, it's going to be detectable. You get my point."

Aviation analysts who watch the F-35 program closely say Greenert's comments reflect ambivalence among naval aviators about the F-35 as a strike fighter, especially compared to the tried-and-true F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets.

"It's not just Greenert, it's across the naval aviation community: They're just not that into the F-35," said Richard Aboulafia, vice president for analysis at the Teal Group.

Admiral Greenert sees a need for the navy to shift away from a warplane that focuses on hiding from the opposition.

"It is time to consider shifting our focus from platforms that rely solely on stealth to also include concepts for operating farther from adversaries using standoff weapons and unmanned systems — or employing electronic-warfare payloads to confuse or jam threat sensors rather than trying to hide from them."

"There are some officers in the Navy who would like to see stealth brought to carriers, but quite a few who wouldn't, who would rather stick with something they know, at a price they know, with two engines that they know and perhaps, shift all funding to the sixth generation [F/A-18]," Aboulafia said.

He said the Navy's buying pattern is telling as to how it sees it integrating into the fleet.

"They are just not acting like the F-35 will be a major part of their force structure in the future," he said, noting he estimated that the Navy might end up buying roughly 200.

US Navy Slashes F-35 Order

The United States Navy has decided not to put all its eggs in the F-35 basket. The navy has trimmed its order for the 2016-2020 period by full third.  It has also canceled a missile system designed specifically for the over priced, overdue and under-performing light attack bomber.

The USN has decided that money can be put to better uses, mainly a new stand-off missile.

Whistling past the graveyard, the JSF (Joint Strike Fighter) Program Office said the American navy's "commitment to the program remains strong" and that the loss of orders will be made up by international customers.  Yeah, right.

Here's another thing to ponder.  There's a powerful faction of the navy brass that doesn't want the service saddled with the F-35.  It's pushing for the quick development of a replacement warplane, possibly unmanned, with all-aspect stealth, longer range, greater payload, improved agility, etc., etc., etc.  Cutting the existing F-35 order may be a way to keep that door fully open.

Is the F-35 the West's Flying Maginot Line?

The overpriced, overdue and under-performing F-35 could actually weaken the defences of America and her allies, including Canada.  Even pretending, for the sake of argument, that the Lockheed light attack bomber could meet the expectations we all had for it at its inception, the sheer cost of the project, especially at a time of austerity, is crippling.

The hard-right Washington Examiner compares the F-35 to France's Maginot Line.

Between the two world wars, France chose to build an impregnable defense against the sort of invasions it suffered in 1870 and 1914. The Maginot Line was over 900 miles long, took 10 years and cost billions of francs to build. The Germans rendered it irrelevant in 1940 by driving their tanks around it.

When it comes to defence budgets, the F-35 is a money magnet.  It sucks money that could be put to better use for other things.  Some purchasers, like the Netherlands, have tried to cope by paring their orders.  The Dutch initially planned to buy 85 light bombers.  They're now in for just 37.  Perhaps 37 would do less damage to the Dutch than being on the hook for 85.

As an untried and unproven weapon system, the F-35 is a potential basket full of surprises.  We're told what it can do but that's a lot like listening to a salesman pitch a car he won't let you take for a drive.  Every other warplane on the market is available for testing and evaluation.  Only the most expensive allows you to kick the tires only after your cheque has cleared the bank.

The Germans knew the Maginot Line was too tough to crack but they also knew that didn't matter if they were willing to send their tanks pouring through the Ardennes forest.  And so they did and so France fell.

The F-35 boasts the invincibility of stealth technology.  While the airplane has been mired in development challenges and setbacks, its intended adversaries, Russia and China, have made good use of their time unlocking the secrets of America's stealth technology, developing and fielding counter-stealth systems and even producing their own stealth warplanes that, quite by coincidence I'm sure, will be operational about the same time as the F-35 (if we're lucky).  

A few years ago it was reported that the Chinese were pleased at the acceptance of the F-35 as the default warplane for the West.  They were happy because they were confident it could be countered and would, like the Maginot Line and the French, drain the defence budgets of America and her allies.

Could "Rapidly Proliferating Threats" Derail the F-35?

(Remember, this is the plane that the Harper government wants to saddle our aircrews with for half-a-century, fifty years.  But, I digress.)

Trying to keep tabs on the development of Lockheed's F=35 requires no end of reading between the lines.

One thing that comes through, admittedly in snippets and from different angles, is that the Americans are starting to conclude that their wunder-plane is less wunderful than they had hoped.

Months ago the journal of the US Naval Institute fretted that the F-35 was operationally flawed because it lacked "all-aspect stealth."  Its stealth cloaking is mainly frontal aspect which means the F-35 remains detectable from the sides, above, below and behind.

The head of the US Air Force air combat command, General Hostage, has said the F-35 isn't a stand alone warplane but requires fighter cover, that is to say the F-22 Raptor, to survive.

Word has leaked out that the F-35 has to steer clear of thunder storms and night flying is out, for now.  More recently it got out that the F-35 has a "heat management" problem that prevents it from flying fast at low altitude, the very place an airplane like this has to operate.  The proposed solution is to re-engine the already over-priced warplane in a few years as a new, adaptive engine is developed.  Keep those cheque books open, fellas.

One thing that has emerged in snippets is that both the US Air Force and US Navy are pressing hard for a new warplane to replace the F-35 ASAP.  They're not sure that its limited stealth cloaking can stand up to rapidly proliferating threats.

There is a saying in Washington defense circles: The threat always gets a vote. It means that a valid strategic threat can influence decision-makers to derail or accelerate a weapons program. In the case of the most expensive aircraft program in history, the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), senior Pentagon officials have begun considering what might happen if the still-developmental F-35 were compromised by the proliferation of ever-more-capable air defenses.

...There is a “growing concern” among senior officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense about the proliferation of advanced air defense radars and anti-aircraft weapons, says an industry official familiar with these discussions. “We took a long time on this. The threat is taking some turns on us.” Senior officials are loath to cause alarm and jeopardize the coalition behind the F-35 and are thus tight-lipped about it.

The situation is not at a crisis point yet, one industry source says. Obsolescence is inevitable for any weapon system; the discussion now is about when that could happen for the F-35 and how to address it if it is sooner than hoped. “We are starting to see the emergence of some stressing capabilities to our conventional forces,” Al Shaffer, acting assistant secretary of defense for research and engineering, told Aviation Week during an interview last March. He was referring to the emergence of radars operating in very-high-frequency bands that can detect stealthy aircraft at long range. The concern is that these VHF radars could eventually pass targeting data to fire control elements for air defense systems.


Bear in mind that killing off the F-35 would be about as simple as dismembering Goldman Sachs. It's the biggest military aquisition programme in American history and there is a consensus in military, industrial and political circles that it's simply too big to kill.  There are too many people with too much at stake to shut it down as Obama did when he killed off F-22 production.  This isn't a 'white elephant.'  It's a diamond-encrusted elephant and, right now, everybody's still prepared to double down.

My guess is that the military types see the way out from under the F-35 is to move on to a newer-technology plane, manned or unmanned, that, put up against the F-35, will be irresistible.  Keep the F-35 as a bomb truck while deploying a "6th generation" successor to the F-22 that will have full-aspect state of the art stealth and a genuine multi-role capability.  This is the scenario predicted by Pierre Sprey, one of America's "fighter mafia" types responsible for the highly successful F-16 and A-10, who expects the US to wind up cutting the build of F-35s from the roughly 2,500 figure common today to around 500, no more.

"I do predict that they will have that much trouble within the next few years, and that we will never see them build more than 500 of these airplanes. That the airplane will become technically such an embarrassment that they'll pretend they did not really need it anyhow, and that 'it’s alright we have a better idea, we are working on a new airplane and forget about the F-35.'"

Foreign customers will have to realize their "F-150" is the Ford pickup variety, not the Ferrari of the same designation.  But, so?  The only Ferrari part will be the price tag.

A Costly Fix for One of the F-35's Achilles' Heels?

Word is out of yet another problem for the F-35.  It has an overheating problem that is said to keep it from going fast at low altitude, right where this less than stellar warplane needs to operate.

Two big drawbacks to the F-35 are its limited range and mediocre speed.  It doesn't go very far in stealth mode on its internal fuel and it is incapable of the modern fighter sine qua non, supercruise.  Those are enormous shortcomings, especially for an uber-expensive warplane.

Good news.  It seems the Americans have noted the problems and have come up with a partial answer - a new engine.  Think of it as a cross between your kid's Transformer toy and a modern, high-powered jet engine.  It still won't achieve supercruise but it's a significant but very costly improvement.

The future fighter will be required to not only fly farther than today’s aircraft, but will also need more speed and power when engaging the enemy. But from a propulsion perspective, up until now these objectives have been mutually exclusive. Longer range and subsonic loiter require lower fuel burn and good cruise efficiency, while higher thrust for supersonic dash demands larger cores and much higher operating temperatures, neither of which is good for fuel burn or stealth.

To solve this conundrum and combine both capabilities in one propulsion system, engine makers are working under the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) Adaptive Engine Technology Development (AETD) program to test technology for a new generation of engines that can be reconfigured in flight. Although AETD is set to end with a flight-weight core demonstration in 2016, the Air Force is planning a follow-on initiative called the Adaptive Engine Transfer Program (AETP). This will pave the way for an adaptive, 45,000-lb.-thrust-class combat powerplant for sixth-generation combat aircraft as well as the possible reengining of the Lockheed Martin F-35 in the 2020s.

Adaptable engines use an array of variable geometry devices to dynamically alter the fan pressure ratio and overall bypass ratio—the two key factors influencing specific fuel consumption and thrust. Fan pressure ratio is changed by using an adaptive, multistage fan. This increases the fan pressure ratio to fighter-engine performance levels during takeoff and acceleration, and in cruise lowers it to airliner-like levels for improved fuel efficiency.

The AETP-based engine design “is more aggressive than today’s standard F-35 requirements but not to the level of [powering] directed energy weapons,” comments McCormick. Instead, the potential benefits of the third stream would be aimed at opening up the low-altitude/high-speed corner of the F-35’s flight envelope to enable extended operation at Mach 0.8/0.9 and 500 ft. “Today, the F-35 has flight restrictions at lower altitudes because of thermal management. You just can’t get heat off the airplane,” he adds. “The program we have laid out says you could be in the F-35 before mid-2020s. It depends on funding profiles and how big AETP is, but it’s early in the 2022-24.”

The F135 engine currently equipping the F-35 costs about $16-million a copy. Given its advanced and more complex engineering it's a safe bet that the AETP engine will cost at least as much, probably a good deal more.

As a light, first-strike bomber, the F-35 needs to be able to go very low and very fast to defeat a sophisticated enemy's air defences.  With the existing engine's heat problems, it can't do that.  This raises the question of whether customers should buy now and be prepared to take a big hit to re-engine the fighter with the AETP engine or be content to remain with an over-cost, under-performer.  Or, they could play it safe and just look elsewhere.

We've Already Entered the Counter-Stealth Technology Era

It'll be years before the over-priced, overdue and underperforming F-35, stealth light-attack bomber, ever shows up in Canadian air force hangars but already the supposed magic of stealth is losing its lustre to the evolution of counter-stealth technology.

Ask yourself just what did we expect the countries obviously intended as the targets of our stealth supremacy to do except to work out ways of both copying it and defeating it.  We've been waving this "first strike" sword over their heads - Russia's and China's - for about 15-years now.  The Americans even war-gamed a dress rehearsal of a stealth sneak attack on China.

The Russians were pretty quick off the mark but, then again, it was a Russian mathematician who unlocked the magical ratios and angles necessary to bring stealth to fruition.  The Americans simply translated his paper.  It took the Americans to show the Russians what they had overlooked.

The Chinese were no slouches either.  They hacked reams of data, including millions of lines of stealth computer code, from the computers of defence contractors (American and British) and the US government.  Then they pounced on the Lockheed RQ-170 stealth drone the Iranians brought down to help unlock secrets of design, radar-cloaking materials and electronics.  Tehran, it seems, allowed Chinese engineers to pretty much help themselves.

So today we have one Russian and two Chinese stealth warplanes flying and in late-stage development that will be coming into service about the same time as the F-35 and one can only guess what they're working on that's still under wraps.

In parallel with developing their own stealth warplanes, the designated "enemies" have also been making strides in counter-stealth technologies.  This room, housing models of America's top stealth warplanes and missiles, is at a Russian laboratory.

As far back as 2001 Aviation Week was publishing accounts of Russia's counter-stealth programme.  Back then the Russians were working to unlock America's stealth secrets using the wreckage of an F-117 stealth bomber brought down by the Serbs during the Kosovo air campaign.

Aviation Week's stealth guy is Bill Sweetman.  He writes that, in 2015, the F-35 debate will be mainly about cost and the emergence of new counter-stealth technologies.

Programmatic risk has become a reality that users must accept. The Netherlands is buying 37 aircraft rather than the planned 85; the money that would have acquired 60 F-15s for South Korea pays for 40 F-35As. The U.S. Air Force has put its badly needed F-16 upgrades on ice and is suffering readiness issues: The F-35 fleet, with a deficient diagnostic and logistics system, has a big appetite for experienced support people.

Cost will drive more JSF stories this year. The program has 700-plus international sales on its books, and relies on them to achieve planned production rates before 2020, but fewer than 5% are covered by signed contracts. Getting firm orders is an increasingly urgent matter. Denmark’s decision is due this year, as is a U.K. defense review that may indicate whether and when Britain plans to acquire most of its on-paper 138-aircraft fleet.

F-35 customers looking at budgets and schedules will want to know what the Block 4A/4B upgrade package will contain. Block 4A development starts next year and 4B becomes operational in 2024, making it the best capability before 2026. The wish list includes nuclear capability, Norwegian and Turkish cruise missiles, Brimstone and Meteor for the U.K., AIM-9X Block 3 for the U.S. Navy, “5th to 4th” communications and close-air-support systems for the Marines. Nobody is perfect, so 4A/4B will also fix discoveries from operational testing. Customers had better be ready to compromise.

The second class of risk, as the programmatic issue closes, is operational. Counter-stealth technology went from theory to big green pieces of hardware in 2013 with the appearance of Russia's 55Zh6ME radar complex, comprising a VHF active, electronically scanned array (AESA) networked with higher-frequency radars. Last year saw claims of stealth detection by the infrared-search-and-track community and radar developers, and the appearance of China’s analog to the 55Zh6ME. Nobody argues that stealth is dead, but has the operational advantage of the F-35 been eroded?

Expect more of the same in 2015: China is building its new, bigger Type 055 destroyer—it will not be surprising to see a low-band AESA on its aft deckhouse. Everyone and his aunt is selling digitized versions of the veteran Russian P-18 radar—counter-stealth on the cheap. In response to concern over low-band threats, Congress has extended the F/A-18/EA-18G production line and, with it, the debate over the future makeup of the carrier air wing.

What this suggests is that the F-35 will no longer be an independent operator but will require jamming from the EA-18G Growler.  Two steps forward, one step back.

Growler

The Marines will continue to mitigate operational risk by developing ways to use the short-takeoff, vertical-landing F-35B. The latest concept of operations seeks to place ships and main bases outside the range of mobile missiles while keeping refueling and rearming points close to the targets. Survival depends on moving those forward strips faster than the adversary can target them.

In other words the Marines operating the F-35B will be on the wrong side of the "whack-a-mole" board.