The F-35's Very Huge and Obvious Achilles' Heel

We know that a lot of top US military types have lost their passion for the F-35 light attack bomber.  A recent report from the Pentagon's Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments put it this way:

[It] will not be able to operate effectively or efficiently against anti-access/aerial-denial (A2AD) weapons and doctrine being developed by China and other adversaries.

Some time ago it became obvious to me that stealth warplanes, other than strategic bombers, were better as defenders than as attackers.  Which leads us to this thing, China's first stealth fighter, the J-20.   By American standards it's not highly stealthy.  Like the F-35 it's limited to frontal aspect only stealth cloaking.  But for its intended role, to counter an American stealth attack, it's more than enough.

Aviation Week's Randy Sweetman explains how the J-20 is a stealth killer.

The J-20 design, therefore, is an air-to-air fighter with an emphasis on forward-aspect stealth, efficient high-speed aerodynamics and range, with a modest internal payload and more than adequate agility for self-defense. The aircraft has considerable potential for development, because of its currently unsophisticated engines. But it is also large and expensive, and continued development of the J-10B shows that China plans to maintain a high-low mix of fighters for a long time to come.

This concept fits very well into an anti-access/area-denial strategy given China’s regional geography and the fact that the nation’s military and geopolitical ambitions are focused on the China Sea and its surrounding island chains. The U.S. has committed its armed forces to concentrate much of their funding on tactical fighters with a combat radius of 600 mi., much less than the distance from their bases to targets on the Chinese mainland, and has persuaded its allies to do the same.

As a result, operations are almost entirely dependent on two groups of aircraft: tankers and large intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft with long endurance. Under the “distributed control” concept favored by U.S. Air Force commanders as a hedge against electronic warfare, including cyberattacks, the ISR aircraft also have a control-and-communications function. However, both tankers and ISR aircraft are vulnerable to attack, and maintaining a defensive combat air patrol (CAP) over them at long range is also difficult.

The J-20’s primary mission, therefore, may be to use stealth and speed to break through the CAP and threaten vital tankers and ISR platforms. Its range gives it a “long lance” advantage—if the tankers, ISR aircraft and escorts have to stay out of the J-20’s range, the tactical aircraft that they support will not have the airborne radar cover or range needed to reach their targets.

Next week the Chinese are scheduled to demonstrate their second, stealth warplane, the J-31, to the public at an airshow in Zhuhai, near Hong Kong.  The J-31 looks eerily similar to the F-35 which some chalk up to the Chinese theft of computer data from American and British defence contractors.

A report from the US Naval Institute newsletter says American pilots fear that the J-31 could prove to be the equal of America's F-22 and F-35.

“They’re still in the glossy brochure phase of development, so they still look ten feet tall and bulletproof,” one senior U.S. fighter pilot familiar with the F-35 program told USNI News.  “I think they’ll eventually be on par with our fifth gen jets — as they should be, because industrial espionage is alive and well.”

Many suspect the J-31 is designed using technology stolen from the Pentagon’s nearly $400 billion Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program.

“They sure look like F-35 and F-22s don’t they?” one Air Force operational test pilot told USNI News.

Look, when the US military are issuing carefully couched statements warning that the F-35 is no longer capable of operating "effectively or efficiently" against the very sort of adversaries it was intended to dominate, its very raison dètre, what compelling reason exists for buying something so costly and yet so incapable of meeting our defence needs at home?

In US circles they describe the F-35 as "too big to kill."  That appears to be the sole remaining justification for saddling the US and her allies with it.  It's like saying "we've gone too far down this road to turn back."  Who says?

Why Does the F-35 Have Just One Engine? Blame It On Those Damned JarHeads.

A huge limiting factor of the F-35 is that it has just one engine.  In a vast, sparsely populated country with extreme weather (yes, that would be Canada), twin-engine reliability is a huge bonus.  One engine goes out - from a bird strike or mechanical failure, whatever - and you've still got one to let you limp back to the barn.

The F-35's vastly more capable big brother, the F-22, has twin engines.   So why just a single, massive jet engine for the F-35?  There is an answer.

When the F-35 was conceived it had to be designed to suit a lot of potential users.   It was supposed to replace most of the American fighter inventory.  That included the F-16, the F-18 and the AV8B, the Harrier.   That dictated three versions of the F-35, all of them sharing a somewhat similar airframe - similar but different.

The U.S. Air Force wasn't picky.   They wanted the ordinary, straight up warplane.   The U.S. Navy wanted a beefier version capable of operating at sea and withstanding the pounding of carrier launches and landings.   But - and there's always a "but" - the U.S. Marine Corps wanted a plane that could fly like their venerable Harrier jump jets.  The U.S.M.C. wanted a short-take off/vertical landing ground pounder.

The U.S.M.C. requirement meant that all three variants of the F-35 would be single-engine.   The airframe had to be designed to suit one big-ass boiler.   And it's for the convenience of the United States Marine Corps that Canada, and the rest of America's Aerial Foreign Legion, is going to have to bite it and go single-engine with all the problems and risks that entails.

Aviation Week's Bill Sweetman pondered what a twin-engine F-35 might look like.   Then it struck him.   It would look pretty much like this:

In case you didn't get the memo, that's China's new J-31 stealth fighter that has more than a passing resemblance to the F-35.   Some speculate that's because China is believed to have filched a lot of the design and computer code from F-35 contractors.

Oh well.

China's Second Stealth Fighter Takes to the Skies

China has flown its second stealth fighter, the J-31, the smaller cousin to its previous model, the J-20.   A look at either of them reveals the classic, Lockheed-Martin, F-22 Raptor pedigree.

Unlike the F-35 limited range, modest payload, marginally maneuverable light attack bomber, the Chinese 20's and 31's appear to be actual fighter aircraft.   Stealth fighter aircraft, the sort that seem designed to give the F-35 fits.   The F-35, of course, is designed to be able to defeat conventional, "4th-generation" fighters, not stealth fighters.   Oopsie!

There are plenty of reports that China hacked Lockheed's computers, its partners' computers and the Pentagon's computers, and stole millions of lines of computer code and design data but, who knows, the spitting image similarity could just be a coincidence.