Unfortunately the above plan (1) Leaves the Navy without a true stealth aircraft for its carriers. If you want to create a real financial scream try suggesting adapting the F-22 for carrier duty. (2) Loses the flexability of new V/STOL aircraft and (3) Undercuts our international F-35 partners.

 

1) The Super Hornet and Growler are perfectly capable until stealthy UCAVs join the fleet.

 

2) There is no point in acquiring a new V/STOL aircraft.   The Marines should buy Super Hornets.  LHA/D/A(R)s are not strike carriers, and the Marines wind up operating their Harriers from fixed runways the vast majority of the time.

 

3) Our international F-35 partners are all balking at the costs of the project and could very well bail out on us.  Every one of the JSF partners has reduced or delayed its commitments to buy airframes, and we wind up bearing the resulting costs.  At some point, we have to decide to stop and live with the sunk costs.  And for those countries just as with the US, there are also cheaper alternatives: F-15ES, advanced F-16s, F/A-18s for the UK CVFs, etc.

Da,

Even the Sec of Def cannot pull planes out of thin air ok. The numbers I stated are not *my* opinion. Those are the officially published numbers by LM and the US Gov to date. And by anyones standards, they are extremely optimisitc. Anyone with an open mind could and should expect those numbers to slip to some extent. Certainly NOT go up, and go up by the required amount Gates is leading people to believe in order to arrive at his 513 number. For him (GATES) to come out and make such a statement is either one of two things. Either he has no clue what is acutually going on with the JSF program, or he is intentionally misleading the American public.

 

Thank you but I am fully aware of the proposed production schedule of the F35. More so then you it appears. The 230/yr is not scheduled to take effect until 2015 and like I said, anyone being realistic can certainly expect that to slip to some degree. The only thing in question is how much. At any rate, Gates cannot simply say we are gonna get X amount of planes and then they magically appear. In the time frame he stated, the US cannot get 513 planes and that's just a simple fact of life. As far as the 230/yr goes, the US is only slated to get 130 of those as well DA. Of those 130 it is split between the USN and USAF ( looks like after 2015 it will be about a 65/35% split in favor of the USAF) so it still leaves the USAF short of planes.

 

I got a feeling I already know what his alternative is going to be. Something like this. After further review I have determined that we do not actually need the earlier stated numbers due to advances in (fill in the blank) and procurement on the F35 will be cut to (fill in the blank). Gates is like reading an old book you've read a dozen times and already know the outcome. It's obvious to anyone with open eyes and anyone who is free to actually critizize him, which you are NOT, where he is taking this nations national defense.

 

Beazz

 

 Source is Newsweek, but it is pertinent.

 

Will Gates Nomination Revive Old Scandals?

Nov. 8, 2006 - By choosing Robert Gates as his new Defense secretary, President George W. Bush is once again turning to a trusted warhorse from his father?s administration. But the Gates nomination also could remind the new Democratic Congress about controversies from the George H.W. Bush era as well.

Gates was investigated during the late 1980s and 1990s by independent counsel Lawrence Walsh over whether Gates had told the truth about the Iran-contra affair, which occurred during his tenure as deputy to Ronald Reagan?s CIA director, William Casey. Questions about Gates's knowledge of secret arms sales to Iran—and the diversion of proceeds to support the Nicaraguan contras—caused Gates to withdraw his nomination to succeed Casey as CIA director in 1987.

Gates was again nominated by President George H.W. Bush to be CIA chief in 1991, setting off an intense and spirited confirmation hearing in which charges and countercharges about Iran-contra flared anew. Gates also was publicly accused by former CIA subordinates of slanting intelligence about the Soviet threat—a criticism that evokes an eerie parallel to accusations hurled against the current Bush administration over its handling of pre-war intelligence about Iraq?s weapons of mass destruction and alleged ties to Al Qaeda.

After months of partisan wrangling and debate, Gates was confirmed as CIA director in November 1991 and served in that capacity until the end of the first President Bush?s term in January 1993. He later served as interim dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University and, after that, as president of Texas A&M, where both the school of government and the Bush library are located. After Congress passed "intelligence reform" legislation in 2004 creating the post of a national intelligence director to coordinate the activities of feuding intelligence agencies, the White House approached Gate

Darth's UAV problem is that he does not seem to know how or when to use them. The "no fly zones" over Bosnia and Iraq burned up thousands of hours of airframe life and was not a mission that could have been done with a Predator drone (or any other drone today). It was a pure air to air mission that soaked up 2 full F15C airwings during the 90's. Every morning the Iraqi Airforce would drive their migs at the no fly zone border and the US F15c's would respond. We had a standing BARCAP mission 24-7 for about a decade in Iraq and to a lesser degree in Bosnia (hey darth, google it!). On top of that there were standing HARM patrols to keep Iraqi SAMs pinned down.

None of this can be done by a UCAV today. Since he is unaware of those missions and their effect upon the USAFs overall mission it is safe to say he isn't qualified to discuss the USAF air superiority requirements moving forward. His argument is first political and second ego-manic. Whenever he meets someone who obviously has a clue, Phaid for instance, he retreats behind a thin veil of "I'm a veteran" and declares himself the smartest guy in the room where any who disagree are "biased". What a boob!

 

 

When he learns history and context of these conversations he might be able to think critically on the subjects. For now he is a troll.

 

Check Six

 

Rocky

It's also my gut reaction that the posters who are suggesting that F-35 be scrapped are somewhat less than sincere in their stated position F-35 could, in fact, actually be cancelled.  End run attempt, nothing more, but good game ;>)

v^2

 

I am one hundred percent sincere.  In and of itself I am not a "F-35 basher", but the program is too risky given the current economic climate.  It forces us to give up too much in the near term and may never deliver at all in the long term. 

 

I stand by my predictions.  Every single completely-new defense acquisition program in the last 10 years has spiraled out of control and wound up canceled or curtailed, and the F-35 looks well on its way to the same fate.  If the choice is between purchasing systems whose development is complete and which are known to meet our current and future needs, versus scrapping them all for a program whose success is far from assured... it isn't any choice at all.

Softwar,

It's sad that you and Herald are incapable of having a debate based on facts rather than your politics. The fact is that neither of you are capable of making your case and are showing a complete misunderstanding of the subject matter altogether. Softwar, your reference to CID is simply laughable and indicative of how little you really understand. Neither of you are worth a single keystroke outside of you local fanclubs on this website. Again, I challenge you on facts. When you are actually capable of responding in kind and learn how to share an opinion without insulting your audience, then you will start to appreciate the benefit of a forum. Grow up. Try to be like Warpig, Phaid or GF. I'm sure both have different opinions compared to mine, but neither of them are diving into the realm of personal insults as both of you two are. Bluewings is absolutely right that some of you behave like clowns in the face of peers. Consider that. Especially Herald. You would think getting pimp slapped of the boards would have humbled him. Warpig was right. 

-DA 

 

 

 

Phaid, my opinion is that we have enough air to air capable platforms to deal with any likely scenarios and that the need for them will decrease as conflicts continue to be more biased towards rogue states and non-state actors. I disagree about not mature enough for primary strike though. I agree that some work has to be done with regard to CAS however.

Appeal to the crowd and character assassination its called when the shouter has no facts to rebut the plain stated case on its merits.

 

I do have to correct you on a couple of points, SW. When a properly designed ballistic missile decouples from its ground support cables it is a self contained robot that flies on its internal guidance. Some of them will have guidance updating mid-phase or will read radio-location beacons to correct for drift error as they debus their RVs, but most don't.

 

There is thus no antenna vulnerability to exploit to misdirect such a war rocket. To may knowledge there is no EW way to spoof such a self-contained weapon within the Earth's atmosphere.

 

Guided missiles are another story.

In  addition to other science fiction things we must be careful about when we make assumptions and declare things, we don't exactly burn missiles out of the air as much as we exploit information paths that the enemy builds in his missiles to disable them. We've done this as spoofing for a long time with self protection jammers and other active countermeasures, but now we can build it into the radar which has the power at last to do more than just spoof. We can cook pilots at range, if the enemy aircraft isn't radio opaque for example. 

 

But remember there has to be an exploit path. Mister Faraday is very much still with us.  

Herald