The F-35: Better Than You Think

an expensive jackable trades but a master of none a rattle of taxpayer money an exceptionally dumb piece of air force pr these are all quotes concerning the lockheed martin f-35 lightning ii an aircraft which safe to say is the subject of some controversy both from enthusiasts and also professionals indeed you only have to punch f-35 into the search engine of your choice and you'll be met with a litany of articles from across the length and breadth of the internet all making the same critiques of the aircraft the f-35 is no good in a dogfight the f-35 is too lightly armoured the f-35 is expensive today however we're going to be donning the mantle of david against the goliath that is popular opinion and trying to present a different perspective on this aircraft the perspective that actually is actually quite good all things considered also please do note that this video is the first of a two-part set in which we will present challenges and contrary opinions to popular narratives within the military aviation commentary community with the other being on the fairchild republic a10 thunderbolt where we will argue the case that the aircraft is in fact much worse than its popular legacy would imagine these videos should be contextualized though as thought exercises not bold declarations of objectivity the idea of the videos is not to convince you of the opinion being proclaimed in the video per se although should these videos set you on a path to those conclusions yourself that's great it's rather these videos intended to serve to demonstrate the exceptional subjectivity within the military commentary community and to encourage you the viewer to be critical and take nothing you read or watch at face value so with that out of the way let's don our treacle waders and begin to take a sledgehammer to the tabloid headlines [Music] in this claim there is a kernel of truth but one which has all context and nuance stripped away from it by media vultures hungry for clicks and the revenue that they bring leaving the truth as naught but a stripped-away skeleton to be carelessly discarded and forgotten now it is true the f-35 can't dogfight or at least not as well as many of the aircraft that it's intended to replace but this is because it doesn't need to technological advances have made dogfighting obsolete and antiquated as tactics in aerial warfare akin to complaining that a brand new imac doesn't have a floppy disk drive nobody is disappointed the claim that the f-35 can't dogfight appears to have its origin in a 2015 test flight report entitled f-35a high angle of attack operational maneuvers 14th of january 2015 which was leaked by david axe of war is boring a face value this report which contains the evaluation of the f-35's air combat maneuvering dog-fighting capabilities appears most damning for the f-35 claiming that quote the f-35 was at a distinct disadvantage in a turning fight and operators would quickly learn that it isn't an ideal regime it wasn't effective for killing or surviving attacks primarily due to lack of energy maneuverability and indeed this report is most damning but as pundits and commentators scrambled to pump out quick and easy articles on the report to harvest those sweet juicy cliques they made a fatal mistake they completely ignored the context of the report that context being that this very specific set of tests was testing the f-35s air combat maneuvering capabilities an obsolete battlefield capability that no longer exists and one that it would never find itself using in real combat and unless something had gone really really wrong now going back to david axe's original article to explain further he discusses how during the simulated dogfights the report documented the f-35 struggling to orientate its nose toward a rear-engaging f-16 to score a gun kill completely overlooking the fact that in the real world the f-35 with its off-bore sight capabilities which allow it to target and fire missiles from any angle would likely have destroyed the intercepting aircraft without having to do any maneuvering at all going further still it's likely that in a shooting war where f-35s were operating within their doctrine rather than a very narrow and specifically limiting test intercepting fourth generation fighters would likely never even get to within visual range combat distances before they were shot out of the sky by the f-35 fifth generation fighters the likes of the f-35 f-22 j-20 and su-57 have made speed and maneuverability all but irrelevant on the model battlefield as their advanced capabilities end an engagement long before the enemy can get into detection range sadly it can only be concluded that much to the disappointment of nostalgic and romantic commentators dogfighting is dead modern aerial warfare is decided by who has the longest range weapons and detection equipment and who can remain the most hidden while using them and in this regard the f-35 is a most terrifying prospect the electro-optical distributed aperture system stuffed into the f-35's nose has a detection range of at least 800 miles and this range is upped to essentially unlimited when the f-35 is network two supporting aircraft beyond this range what's more when this is paired with a cache of weapons that includes the agm-158 jasm with its up to 1200 mile range it's easy to see how in the face of such advanced capabilities the claim that the f-35 can't dogfight is a completely moot point [Music] anyone who has spent any time browsing headlines regarding the f-35 has no doubt come across this claim the media loves click-inducing and context-free headlines about the trillion-dollar aircraft well it's a lot of money but is this claim true is the f-35 really too expensive now before we can answer that question first we must settle on a figure for articular aircraft the f-35 having that will then have a benchmark with which to compare other aircraft for simplicity and to prevent this video from developing into a super interesting thesis on the economics of aircraft procurement we're going to keep this simple and focus purely on the per unit cost of the f-35 and its comparable aircraft in this regard it's actually quite a hard thing to put a figure on even with us ignoring the sunk costs of development the per unit cost reduces with every additional f-35 made as greater efficiencies from the ever-expanding knowledge and expertise of the lockheed factory floor are yielded and with 11 to 13 jets typically being made per month odds are that any up-to-date figure penned in this video would be incorrect by the time the video has been edited and published if it is even possible to really arrive at a truly correct figure for such a complicated thing in the first place so take all of this with a grain of salt mercifully though we have at least some figures to begin working with as the us government very kindly tells us some of these in its budget reports looking at those figures there is no doubt that the f-35 was a monumentally expensive aircraft during the early stages of its production with the first f-35a to come off the production line in 2007 costing an eye-watering 200 221 million dollars since then however increases in production quantities as well as the aforementioned increasing familiarity and efficiency of lockheed martin's factory floor workers have seen this plummet to as little as 77 million dollars for the f-35a models in the 14th production batch a cost decrease of 65.16 per unit with f-35b models dropping to 101 million per unit and f-35c models dropping to 94 million per unit this decreasing cost has also taken place throughout the entire production run of the f-35 with the f-35s of the 14 production batch being reduced from anywhere from 12.3 to 13.2 percent compared to f-35s of the previous production batch this decrease is also generally typical of reductions between most production batches all of this finally gives us a current production cost which we can use going forward 77.9 million dollars for an f-35a 101.3 million dollars for an f-35b and 94.4 million dollars for an f-35c with figures for the f-35 settled we then need aircraft to compare it against and to that end let's start with fellow fifth generation aircraft comparing production costs from different countries and economies is always difficult but for purposes of this video we were able to put a reasonably accurate figure on each of them there are currently four fifth generation fighters in service the chengdu j-20 the lockheed martin f-22 and the sukhoi su-57 and finally the subject of today's video the lockheed martin f-35 the first of those the j-20 costs roughly 120 million dollars per unit and bear in mind that chinese labor costs are lower than american labor costs and for some reason research and development costs were also lower for some reason the second of those the f-22 cost over 230 million dollars per unit adjusting for inflation and according to the kremlin the su-57 cost 40 million dollars per unit this of course is nonsense in reality it costs somewhere in the region of 100 to 120 million dollars so suddenly the f-35 isn't looking so expensive but all of the aforementioned aircraft are top of the line fifth generation fighters so surely even the cheapest among them must be monumentally expensive right akin to choosing a maserati over a ferrari as the budget option and in the same way that some would say that you don't need a ferrari when a kia still gets you to the shops there are some in the military commentary community such as pierre spray who would make the same argument for military aircraft you don't need a hyper-advanced f-35 when for the price of one f-35 you could put up multiple upgraded or newly produced legacy aircraft but well is that claim actually true to answer this question we need to figure out how the cost of an f-35 stacks up against fourth generation legacy fighters and with the bold declarations already heard that they must be fractions of the cost it'd be absurd to imagine they could cost the same if not even more than the f-35 right well actually not necessarily let's look at a few examples to explain this a bit further so we'll start with the eurofighter typhoon this makes a good comparison as like the f-35 it was an aircraft plagued with highly publicized cost overruns like the f-35 it's a high-volume production fighter with 517 aircraft having been produced for nine different air forces but unlike the f-35 it is firmly a fourth generation fighter with no stealth capabilities and being built for hyper-maneuverability dogfighting rather than for destroying its enemies from far over the horizon so when in many regards the only difference between these two planes is their generation and the corresponding technologies and design philosophies one would expect the eurofighter to be significantly cheaper right but alas it's not prices of course vary customer to customer depending on quantity ordered and other factors but most credible estimates for the average price of the euro fighter place it at about 120 million dollars nearly 20 dollars more than the shiniest and sexiest f-35b make no mistake too as much as we can point to individual highly specific and largely unrepresentative of reality studies to argue the case that fourth generation fighters are better than they actually are and that correspondingly fifth generation fighters are worse than they actually are in real shooting wars with all aircraft operating as envisaged an f-35 would come out the victor over a fourth generation fighter any day of the week and just to prove we haven't hand selected a uniquely expensive fourth generation fighter let's look at another the da so raphael like the eurofighter it is a peak fourth generation fighter and like the eurofighter it costs more than an f-35 with the final unit cost being anywhere from 120 to 160 dollars depending on who you ask now particularly astute viewers will note that both of the previously cited fourth generation fighters are modern and advanced fighters really being more sort of 4.5 generation fighters better than true fourth generation fighters but not quite advanced enough to be considered fifth generation now this is the point that the ps praise of the world would kick in the door of the studio and start screaming hysterically about legacy aircraft as the persistent belief remains in certain circles that modern air forces are best served sticking with tried and true legacy aircraft and simply continually upgrading them to save money but is that belief actually true to answer that question let's have a look at one such aircraft the f-15ex this is the latest version of the venerable f-15 originally introduced all the way back in 1976. it is a hell of an upgrade for sure and most certainly brings the f-15 into the 21st century with fly-by-wire controls digital cockpit displays advanced avionics and new electronic warfare technologies the cost of all this modernization 110 million dollars or 136 million dollars if you want these simulators electronic warfare systems and targeting pods to make the thing actually usable once again significantly more than the cost of a brand new f-35 and all for an aircraft which is no longer top dog on the battlefield and would find itself radically outmatched if it ever went toe to toe with a fifth generation fighter so the f-35 is not looking that bad isn't it with that in mind let's jump into our next rebuttal [Music] critics of the f-35 will often claim that it's too lightly armed having only one 25-millimeter gau-22a cannon and either two aim-120 air-to-air missiles with two gbu-31 bombs or four aim-120 air-to-air missiles but while this isn't exactly untrue the claim misses out vital context and supplementary information that showed that in fact the f-35 isn't too lightly armoured at all for starters the f-35 only carries the aforementioned loadout while operating in its stealth configuration for operations such as initial seed operations when an enemy's air defense network is still very much alive and kicking this would be highly dangerous for traditional non-stealth aircraft and losses would likely be incredibly high if they were to even operate at all so therefore the f-35 is only lightly armed while operating in environments traditional aircraft are highly unsuited for and would likely suffer high losses in any way and indeed it is this very light armament that provides the edge needed in such environments as it maintains the smooth silhouette needed to maximize stealth capabilities sure it would be nice to have more there's always more you can never have too much ammunition but in light of this full context the point does seem rather moot furthermore this humble loadout is not the f-35s only loadout as when battlefield conditions are more secure their defense networks have been neutralized and air superiority has been achieved the f-35 can be outfitted with a significantly expanded array of weapons in its so-called beast mode this mode comprises of an air-to-air configuration of 14 aim 128 air missiles supplemented by two am9x sidewinder missiles or an air-to-ground configuration of two aim-120 air-to-air missiles six two thousand pound gbu-31 bombs and two am9x sidewinder missiles even the fiercest f-35 critics would struggle to call that loadout lacking detractors of the f-35 specifically and fifth generation aircraft more generally will often cite this compromise between stealth and firepower saying that it proves the unviability of such aircrafts and they'll generally point to the 1997 downing of an f-117 the f-35s forerunner by the serbian military as proof of this this moves out of the scope of this video somewhat but as it is a criticism leveled against all fifth generation aircraft it's still worth clearing up as part of the defense of the f-35 the claim usually goes that f-117 stealth characteristics were totally compromised when it opened its bombay door which ruined its stealthy radar profile and led to it being shot down but while this is part of the story it's not the story and it misses out crucial context yet again for starters the ea-6b prowl or electronic warfare aircraft that normally accompanied the f-117s to further protect them against ground radar lock-ons were grounded due to bad weather which left the f-117 uniquely vulnerable as they flew with radar antennas retracted during strike missions and unaccompanied they were essentially flying blind this operational failure was further compounded by the predictability of u.s flight paths so when serbia's surprisingly good overseas intelligence reported that f-117s were taking off unaccompanied serbian air defense knew exactly where to point their missiles in an ambush then after all those other factors had compounded to create a uniquely unfavorable situation to the f-117 opening its bombay to fire helped create a bigger radar picture that helped to bring the aircraft down consequently it can be seen that any attempt to use the 1997 shoot down as a claim that the limited stealth weapons load of fifth generation aircraft generally and the f-35 specifically make them useless if not dangerous in the real world is another moot point that incident was caused by operational failure and overconfidence in design not any fundamental flaws with the technology of stealth aircraft so from this analysis we can begin to see that criticisms that the f-35 is too lightly armed don't hold much water they are arguments predicated upon taking the f-35 out of the context in which it was developed to operate and putting it in hypothetical situations in which it would never find itself on the battlefield and then pivoting towards criticizing it in roles that alternative aircraft simply wouldn't be able to carry out at all [Music] having addressed the major criticisms of the f-35 namely that it's no good in a dogfight it's too lightly armed and that it's too expensive hopefully now it's apparent even if you completely disagree with the conclusions of this video that assessing military procurement is not a black and white matter it's a highly complex thing which requires the full and true consideration of many differing facets in their correct context in light of that what we'd really like you to take away from this video is not necessarily a conviction that the f-35 is the best thing since sliced bread but instead simply a conviction to appreciate that complex matters such as this rarely have their full nuance explained in a click-bait tabloid headline with that in mind join us for part two in this series where we'll be taking a sledgehammer to that most cherished and lorded aircraft the fairchild republic a10 thunderbolt 2. thanks for watching [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 914,509

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Id: hlC2ADUtAzk

Length: 19min 39sec (1179 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 27 2022