That's a given. Even those who most likely would not join the fray, like vietnam or singapore are accounted for.
US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter tphuang
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F-35 just turn to become even a worse deal when mature than it was when new...
And they manage to sell it to a lot of customer at incredible cost and maintenance handcuff. Lockeed got a nice greedy monopoly.
In a way, they've actually done world peace a huge favor by essentially disarming all their vassals. Forcing them to replace most of their military inventory for an arm and a leg, with equipment that will be worthless in less than a decade. Ultimately leaving their vassals financially exhausted and militarily impotent just in time for China to lead in literally everything (let's say 2030-2035 time frame).
Lethe
Captain
In Australia's case, it was because Super Hornet allowed us to compensate for our own short-sighted decision-making (re: F-35 project timelines and declining F-111 and F/A-18 readiness) by drawing directly from USN order slots on an active production line.
That's fair. To be honest, I was mostly thinking about warships. I guess the broader point is that it's worth paying attention to what is happening to the oldest and least capable elements of the inventory because, in concert with current production and programs of record, it's a clue to what is envisioned in the medium-term.
The difficulty with that idea is that a USAF divested of its older platforms is a dramatically smaller USAF, because few airframes were inducted in the post-Cold War era and both fifth-generation projects were delayed, over budget, and experienced significant ongoing challenges in terms of operations and maintenance costs and future development paths.
One can appreciate where the basic idea came from. The objective was to bridge between the dominant force structure of the then-present, to the equally dominant VLO force structure of the future. That transition was threatened by the lower budgets of the post-Cold War era but, conversely, the "unipolar moment" allowed USAF to divert resources from near-term procurement to longer-term R&D. The difficulty is that those longer term bets have not paid off to the extent that was envisioned.
2021 paper from the Mitchell Institute goes into the arguments against the acquisition of F-15EX, and those arguments are compelling enough on their own terms. Zooming out a little, though, it's more than a little odd that USAF advocates are at all troubled by services (PLAAF/PLANAF) that are implementing force structure strategies that are explicitly rejected for USAF, i.e. the ongoing production of advanced fourth-generation fighter jets.
One conclusion that may be drawn is that these dichotomies that are presented (investing in advanced fourth-generation aircraft vs. investing in fifth-generation aircraft vs. accelerating R&D for sixth-generation aircraft) only present as such because there is insufficient budgetary, institutional, even political space to pursue those paths simultaneously. Using the American nomenclature for the purposes of comparison, China currently has two advanced fourth-generation combat aircraft (counting J-15/16 as essentially one design and production lineage), two fifth-generation combat aircraft, and at least two developmental sixth-generation combat aircraft (that are clearly complementary, rather than one being an alternative to the other). Orders, budgets and personnel can be shifted around between these projects as required. The American system today simply has fewer moving pieces, and so the choices present with much harder-edged trade-offs between competing priorities.
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Some of the comparisons between PLAAF and US and to US numbers during cold war period.
First Photo Emerges of US Navy P-8A Poseidon Flying with LRASM Missile. A Poseidon was spotted flying over the Mojave Desert with the long-range anti-ship missile last month.
Important analysis at 41:15 and 42:30.
I have been saying this for a long time. Most of the supposed huge advantage in numbers of airframes by the US and its allies hides the fact that a large fraction of these airframes are extremely old.
Reports we have had of extremely low availability of German Eurofighter aircraft are, I think, just the tip of the iceberg.
Most Eurofighters and a huge chunk of Rafales produced use outdated electronics worse than those in the Su-35.
And these are fairly "new" aircraft compared to most NATO aircraft which are Cold War era.
The F-35 could be a solution if they fixed its issues, but rather than fixing issues, they continue to pile on more crap on the system.
Adding new electronics to existing airframes comes with its own issues. Current upgrades of older existing F-16s to AESA for example due to power generation and cooling limitations have way less sensor performance than newly built F-16 aircraft.
I also think the US did another big mistake by changing the dimensions and power of the engines in the F-47 to something other than what the existing engine prototypes provided. This will further delay the program.
Reports we have had of extremely low availability of German Eurofighter aircraft are, I think, just the tip of the iceberg.
Most Eurofighters and a huge chunk of Rafales produced use outdated electronics worse than those in the Su-35.
And these are fairly "new" aircraft compared to most NATO aircraft which are Cold War era.
The F-35 could be a solution if they fixed its issues, but rather than fixing issues, they continue to pile on more crap on the system.
Adding new electronics to existing airframes comes with its own issues. Current upgrades of older existing F-16s to AESA for example due to power generation and cooling limitations have way less sensor performance than newly built F-16 aircraft.
I also think the US did another big mistake by changing the dimensions and power of the engines in the F-47 to something other than what the existing engine prototypes provided. This will further delay the program.
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One of the big challenges that the USAF faces is that it's too capable for proper reform and rethinking. Let me explain, we all can see that it has a ton of problems and that there aren't all that many good solutions out there to fix these problems. However, the USAF is still far and away stronger and more capable than any air force in the world, unless you count China. So in a conflict with anyone else, the USAF should still be able to win fairly easily despite all of its issues.
On the other hand, a war against China is a complete nightmare. The distances and basing options alone are enough to make it nigh impossible, and that doesn't even factor in things like China's stealth fighters, advanced AAMS, AWACS, and so on. It's probably a unsurmountable challenge unless some drastic changes are made to how the USAF operates, how it procures new equipment, how new gear is designed, and so on. It'll take a very long time to achieve, initial progress will be very slow, it'll face a lot of opposition from entrenched interests, and it'll probably lead to career suicide for whoever is in charge of implementing it. Given all of this, it's more likely for nothing to happen, and hope that the next guy fixes the tangle of problems. It looks like Allvin knew how the game is played and it's probably why he's going out on his own terms.
Finally, I wonder what plane the USAF is going to use to replace all its dinosaurs with. The F-35 isn't the all-in-one solution that they thought it was going to be. The Air Force sees the Block 4 variant as the minimum of what they want, but Lockheed Martin can't build that. It also isn't the kind of air superiority fighter that's needed either. I think getting some F-15EX is a good idea, but an overpriced 50-year old plane is obviously not a long term solution. Besides, Boeing can't build it in numbers. The F-47 is at least a decade away from being a practical platform, and may not be available in numbers for another decade. It's probably going to be super expenisive so there's no way that it can be a mainstay fighter. What's left, getting F-16Vs? The J-10 is superior to it, and the PLAAF doesn't even want it any more.
My main takeaway from this is that they say that the USAF needs to have 60 combat squadrons to match their current operations but they only have about 48. Their solution? More money, but over time so that this money can be absorbed properly. The problem is that this thinking is just weird. If you don't have the forces to match your current strategy, the only proper move is to modify your strategy to what your current forces can handle. Making pie in the sky plans that don't suit what you can do is just dumb.
Also, if the USAF's processes aren't performing as well as they need to, the conclusion isn't that the processes are perfect; they just need more funding. It should be that the Air Force needs to critically examine these processes and see where they're failing so they can find solutions.
i don't think what they're saying is weird. what is weird is the situation. the unfortunate reality is that it's not an airforce problem, but a national problem -- i think the cut and dry of it is that the us is actually out of capital. everything's too inflated here, there's no reason it should proverbially take a hundred dollars and a phd to turn around and wipe your ass but such seems to be the cost of the lies we tell each other to stay on top. perhaps someday historical texts will draw a parallel between the us and the spartans and their divestiture of menial work to the lowly helots...
back to the point though, for these officers it's not in their wheelhouse to speak outside of what the air force can or would like to do about it. it's possible that at this point an air force in no realistic form can be the correct tool for the job, where a us that must contest china under austerity may have to resort to more guerilla tactics of information and cultural warfare instead of kinetic interventions. what role does the air force have in that? in other words, asking the air force to come up with an airpower-centric solution might be something that resembles asking a t-rex what it needs to prosper after the asteroid has already landed. the air force officers certainly can't say a defeatist thing like "nah, we're fucked, i know none of these reforms will go through." they can only say what they think they would need for the job to get done.
and so having spoken out according to their conscience, they have washed their hands of any responsibility for the aftermath, which will be passed successively onwards towards congress and eventually down to the citizenry.
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