America's Troubled F-35: Five Ways to Replace It

[unhappycamper]

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/americas-troubled-f-35-five-ways-replace-it-10914



America's Troubled F-35: Five Ways to Replace It
Robert Farley
July 20, 2014

~snip~

If it could, however, what would follow? The following five options are not mutually exclusive, and any strategy for replacing the F-35 would need to borrow liberally from several.

Build more F-22s

The first choice seems obvious. Instead of moving ahead with the F-35, the United States could restart the F-22 line. We have enough experience with the Raptor to know that it will likely be an effective platform moving forward, and to update new models with additional capabilities.

unhappycamper comment: F-22s work reasonably well, but they cost over $410 million dollars EACH. Good luck with this option.

~snip~

Go Unmanned

What about the killer robots? The biggest story in the last decade of aviation has been the expansion of drone technology and doctrine. The United States, followed by a few other countries, has radically expanded the use of drones beyond what anybody expected in 2000. Drones have fulfilled many traditional airpower roles, including reconnaissance, close air support, interdiction, and long range strike.

unhappycamper comment: Drones aren't worth a shit in a dogfight.

~snip~

Updated Legacy Fleet

The United States already has a huge fleet of advanced fighter aircraft, and an industry capable of churning out new airframes. Why not just update the older platforms? The Su-27 Flanker has often been portrayed as the primary threat to U.S. 5th generation fighters, but it is nothing more than an updated Cold War platform. Of course, the U.S. Navy (USN) and U.S. Air Force (USAF)have also followed this path to an extent; modern Vipers have little in common with the first F-16A production models.

unhappycamper comment: Any US made fighter jet now costs at least $100 million. Perhaps we should get out of the war bidness.

~snip~

Waiting for Generation Six

Another way of cutting our losses would be to abandon the fifth generation fighter entirely (apart from existing Raptors and F-35s), and focus instead on the development of sixth generation fighters. Expectations for Gen Six fighters generally focus around stealth, supercruise, and networking capabilities, potentially with tailless configurations, the capacity for the installation of laser weaponry, and the possibility of unmanned operation.

unhappycamper comment: Another way of cutting our losses would to use diplomacy rather than weapons and repeal the AUMF.

[Cayenne]

1. Six: Outsource it.

American industry has gone to China etc. Why not the MIC as well. I'm sure the Chinese would build F-22's (meeting all quality inspections to) for a third the cost.

[flamin lib]

2. Option 6 v 2.0:

Just buy the airframes from Russian stocks and add US avionics. Cheap, would be a match in combat and would give us an advantage by superior electronic capabilities.

[appal_jack]

3. Updating the legacy fleet seems to be the logical choice here.

Updating the legacy fleet seems to be the logical choice here. While getting out of the war business is certainly a worthy goal, it will not be instant even when we start moving in that direction.

In particular, I would love to see the A-10 Warthogs keep flying. Amazing planes.

-app

[davepc]

4. Don't the F-22 and F-35 have a different mission set?

The option that makes sense is instead of building one plane to meet the requiremnts of every service, every service should build the plane that they need.

No need to force feed a VTOL option into an Air Force jet just to make the Marines happy, for example.