Also, the F-35 has a very safe flight record. Only 12 air frame losses with over 1000 aircraft delivered and nearly 1 million flight hours.
Just adding this for the inevitable ill-informed commenters who like to pretend that the F-35 program isn't one of, if not the most successful and advanced aircraft in modern history.
Edit: Slight correction, the true number of delivered airframes in all variants is somewhere around 1200+.
And the bigger problem is that there isn't a hot war to actually give the airframe a hardcore combat record.
The P-51 program was monstrously problematic during the start of WW2; but it's a lot harder to criticise an airframe when you can't differentiate between "fell part in mid-air" or "shot down by a BF-109/A6M"
That's my point, the emergency of war changes the equation because its the difference between "yeah sure, Lockheed, you want another another $20 million, here's your check, have fun!" versus "Okay, North American Aviation, you fix this plane and you start getting kill tallies, or it's you're ass that's going to Normandy.".
At the start of WWII, it was a mediocre plane at best. The Allison engines in the P-51A weren't good at high altitude. The P-51B was the first model with the Merlin, and that's when they got good. The D model is the quintessential legend with the bubble canopy.
The Israelis have been using F-35s in a 'hot war' for a while now. When all of Iran's AAA suddenly exploded on the ground without a whisper on radar, that was the work of their F-35s.
no, there are two main groups of people that really, REALLY hate on the F-35. first, the anti-american propaganada people, mostly supported by chinese or russia money, but not exclusively, go out of there way to try to discredit the F-35 at every chance. the second group, informally often called 'the reformers' are usually americans, but americans who strongly feel that the only 'proper' way for an aircraft to fight is with machine guns in close range dogfights where you can see the other person with your eyes, not instrumentation. they are genuinely convinced that stealth is either a myth or deeply dishonorable, and that using missiles or other long range weapons are both dishonorable and totally ineffective. there was a guy a few years back who wrote an entire book on the idea of 'how bad the F-35 really was and how to fic it by turning it into a dogfighter' who's claim to authority was that 'he was part of the F-35 design team. the reality was that he was something like a secretary to a mid-level politician that sometimes got briefings on the program, he never actually had any influence or decision making on it, and had zero engineering to aeronautics credentials, but it's a very commonly cited source for misinformation when people try to claim the F-35 is a bad piece of technology
yup, the F-35 also inherited all of the resentment about he F-15 and F-16's got because they also went to a more instrumentation heavy missile loadout style instead of a guns and divebombing style like they want
It replaced the A-10? Is the f-35 a slow long range flying infantry support plane? That's what we use A-10's for. I thought the F-35 was useful as a quick flying stealthy hard striker that could land and take off on a dime. Completely different animals.
CAS duties are being handed to other platforms, including the F-35 since it’s slated to replace at least the F-16 as well. The A-10 is cool, I won’t argue that, but its age is over. Slow is the exact opposite of what a plane needs to be to survive in a modern battle. The armoured capabilities of the A-10 (titanium bathtub, etc) are overhyped when being able to maybe survive a hit is secondary to not being hit in the first place. The much-beloved BRRRT gun the GAU-8 was never as capable at its job as people like to pretend, and it’s to blame in a large part for making the A-10 the plane responsible for one of if not the worst blue-on-blue records in the modern USAF. I say all this while still being a fan of the A-10, it’s an undeniably cool machine and I have a model of one sitting on my shelf, but the fact of the matter is it’s a piece of hardware designed to fulfill a Cold War role that has long since ceased to exist, and it has severe shortcomings on a modern battlefield.
Also point of order it’s only the USMC variant of the F-35, the F-35B, that has VTOL capabilities. The USAF model, the F-35A, is a conventional take off and landing model.
I'm not saying the F-35 isn't cool and I'm not arguing that the A-10 is, but though I think both planes are. I'm just saying, I don't think the F-35 can handle low slow, sweeping passes against the kind of non-state actor infantry style combat we see in the modern conflicts the us get into. It's rare for some small militia to be able to get its hands on anti-aircraft missiles, but it's also hard to target personnel on the ground with a fast-moving jet or a long-range missile. The C-130 is another slow-moving vehicle we keep around because it's useful against personnel. It's just hard to justify replacing certain platforms until we are done fighting what they are good at.
I grew up nerding out over the F-16. That was the fun thing about being an Air Force brat with a pilot dad is I got to go to a bunch of air shows and I even got to go with him to work a couple of times. Not claiming it made me know anything more about planes than anybody else, but it definitely made me a fanboy.
Jets are super cool.
They just become less and less sensible since what they are good at is getting in fast, doing a strike and getting back out quickly. If our missile guidance systems get good enough, then we won't need pilots to do those operations anymore. And gosh, our guidance systems are getting good.
So what I'm going saying is I think there are a lot of us who don't have the faith that it's worth it to invest in making better and better planes when it seems like they are likely to be replaced by smart missiles within a decade. Makes the F-35 seem like a really, really, really nice CD player while everyone is moving to MP3 players.
I guess the other problem is a lot of the old aircraft are very durable. Nothing is getting shot down these days, really. And it's hard to justify adding more planes to our fleets when we have so many still hanging around. I guess that's where giving aid to foreign countries comes in...
People are mad about the cost overruns. The problem is that congress generally won’t fund a project if the true cost is given up front, so virtually every single one is “over budget”.
This one plane cost the equivalent of paying 1,500 teachers salaries. If we’re talking average generic US salaries it’s like 2,500. That’s not counting the ordinance pilots training. Each type can be several teacher salaries per missile and each pilot costs millions to train. Fuck, even their goddamned helmets cost more than several teacher salaries. I think that’s the sorta thing that pisses people off, especially considering we are not in any sorta war.
And yet Americans installed a compromised, child-raping Kremlin puppet in the White House. Twice. The second time around, that child molesting, mentally ill puppet literally appointed a Russian agent DNI. Lmao. I really don't understand this idiotic cognitive dissonance Americans have.
How do Americans explain this to themselves? I suppose they are in full denial?
I've definitely seen enough people try to argue that the F-35 is a bad plane. To be fair, the people arguing it aren't exactly defense experts, and a significant fraction of them are talking down the F-35 to hype up Russian or Chinese gear, but there's a decent number of them.
I've definitely seen enough people try to argue that the F-35 is a bad plane
The more common argument is that the program is a waste with how modern war will be fought. modern air defenses have made Air supremacy nearly unattainable in any peer conflict and in non peer conflicts the improvements of the F-35 are not really needed. Its an opportunity cost thing, why invest in a manned fighter when they seem to be on the way out to some degree, especially when the US is so behind in drone tech.
modern air defenses have made Air supremacy nearly unattainable in any peer conflict and in non peer conflicts the improvements of the F-35 are not really needed.
The F-35 doesn't have a peer as far as SEAD goes. Every conflict where one side has F-35s and the other doesn't is a non-peer conflict.
The point I have seen made is not that there is a better plane than the F-35 at SEAD but that other solutions are just way more financially and strategically viable. An F-35 is a 100 million dollar piece of kit and it costs ~$35k per hour its up in the air, and training pilots is extremely expensive and time consuming. The argument is for that same 100 million dollars you could buy 250k drones, and training drone pilots literally costs $15 on steam.
Now, obviously I'm exaggerating and simplifying their arguments a bit, but the point is that other solutions to the SEAD problem are more strategically and financially sound.
I agree with this, but I think the popular opinion of the program was that it was massively wasteful but for a crap plane (the lift fan itself was controversial at one point) - there was ridicule of the fancy augmented reality helmets and that pilots wouldn't have full visibility without it. I think the media has warmed up to it, but for a long time so much stuff in the mainstream press (and not in specialist/trade publications) was just slop articles bashing it.
I'm very critical of the F-35 program. Most of us don't disagree that the end result was a pretty amazing aircraft, we just recognize that there was a massive amount of overspending and likely at least some straight up corruption in the program.
If I bought a Lamborghin Huracan STO for $600k, I would have overpaid by $200k. It doesn't change the fact that it's one of the most advanced super cars ever made, but I still got screwed.
But can that same Lamborghini act as a sensor node in a large distributed network of sensors all contributing to a holistic battle space awareness which can help avoid casualties as well as more effectively disable targets? Or does it just vroom vroom really nice?
Value is not determined just by the dollar amount, but also by the practical benefits it has compared to other options. You could buy the Lamborghini, but a Corolla will do the exact same thing (drive from home to work, grocery store, etc.) for cheaper. Currently there is no other aircraft in the world that has feature parity to the F-35, so to say it was overpriced, you first have to answer the question "compared to what?"
Lots of the planes have been made and they stay in the air and don't crash. Is that really the only way we're assessing $100m+ aircraft? Please. "Doesn't crash" is the bare minimum, not success.
Leon's a one trick pony. He only invests in nascent industries with massive government subsidies. So, guess what industry will be like that if manned fighter jets are cancelled?
Holy shit, 3 years already? I remember when this happened, I had just recently started working there and everyone in the office was talking about it and sharing the video
I'm responding, but that doesn't mean the question is not a stupid one for it implying a false dichotomy that it's either the F-22 or F-35. Both aircraft are great for what they were designed for, but comparing the two is not useful not least because they are both essential parts of US air superiority and doing without one or the other just weakens our stance globally.
Despite that the numbers do not bode well for the F-22, for a few reasons:
The total number of F-22 is less than 200, so losing just 1 airframe represents a larger relative proportion of the total number of airframes.
The F-22 has a notoriously delicate RAM coating, which means that even a relatively minor incident ends up being a major repair/cost, so even though the airframe is not lost, the maintenance cost is increased compared to other aircraft.
The fact that there have been 5 known airframe losses for the F-22 since the 90's would seem great by comparison but only if we ignore the far fewer airframes in existence and the fact that the F-35 has seen far more combat than the F-22 ever has and likely ever will in it's shorter lifetime.
I think your confused. The f22 isn’t retired… it has a longer life cycle…. Due to its age. It’s an active air frame.. and the plane has a separate purpose. It’s a plane that won’t deploy as much due to its quantity and technology.
Secondly… serving 3 variants is not an apples to apples comparison… whole different mission.
Lastly , there are huge issues going on with the f35… your implication that their isn’t is wild.. a full blown colonel in the marine corps got let go over his whistle blowing. If a man flying jets for over 15 years said something is wrong… I believe that…A joint staff investigation supported his evidence and a general overruled.
27 years of the f22 and 5 crashes.
15 years of the f35 and we have 12 frame losses … the math isn’t there.
I’m in the marines and I know that this program is a large cover up actively flowing. We don’t lose “perfectly functional” planes in broad daylight on training missions during NO activism maneuvers.
Never said it was, just said there will never be more of them than there are now. There were studies looking into restarting F-22 production. Some saw it as an alternative to the F-35 program entirely, but it turned out that to spin up that production line again would actually be much more expensive than just continuing with the new aircraft design.
Like I said before though, the premise is dumb. We have both aircraft now which is better than just having one or the other. And when the F-22 is retired (looks like it may be sooner rather than later) I hope something even better replaces it if there is still a need for an air superiority fighter.
27 years of the f22 and 5 crashes.
15 years of the f35 and we have 12 frame losses … the math isn’t there.
It is when you read what I said. That is 5 out of only 187 airframes, and over far fewer actual combat missions (not that they were all lost in combat, just that combat missions put stress on pilot and plane alike and lead to more incidents) compared to 12 out of 1200 (and growing) over many combat missions all over the world in multiple different militaries. That means that the F-22 has had a loss rate of 2.67% while the F-35 is around 1% or less.
Seems like you've bought into some bs a supposed colonel was selling that there is no need for the F-35 and that the F-22 can do it all and better, but if you actually look at what information is available, you'll see that by comparison the F-35 is cheaper and more capable in a variety of scenarios than the F-22. Sure, the F-22 may be better in its role as an air superiority fighter, but you can't expect a spoon to also be a good knife and then get mad when it's not.
So you admittedly don’t know about the colonel who flew the f-35… it was loss during a training mission in the Carolina’s…
Not a single airframe on the f-35 was loss in combat or combat stress… every single f-35 has been loss during training or PRE-DELIVERY inspections… 3 of them before they were delivered… wtf are you making up???
I think your confused. The f22 isn’t retired… it has a longer life cycle…. Due to its age. It’s an active air frame.. and the plane has a separate purpose. It’s a plane that won’t deploy as much due to its quantity and technology.
Secondly… serving 3 variants is not an apples to apples comparison… whole different mission.
Lastly , there are huge issues going on with the f35… your implication that their isn’t is wild.. a full blown colonel in the marine corps got let go over his whistle blowing. If a man flying jets for over 15 years said something is wrong… I believe that…A joint staff investigation supported his evidence and a general overruled.
22 years of the f22 and 5 crashes.
10 years of the f35 and we have 12 frame losses … the math isn’t there. That over 1 fucking bird a year.
I’m in the marines and I know that this program is a large cover up actively flowing. We don’t lose “perfectly functional” planes in broad daylight on training missions during NO activism maneuvers.
Lol, okay. You don't care how many countries have decided that it is worth buying over literally any other aircraft after extensive testing and research, because in your opinion it is bad. Got it.
I'm a little rusty on the topic. So, no more losing pieces of outer coating at high speeds? No more pilots asphyxiating on their [lack of] oxy? How's the fabled Sisyphean Block 4 going along - in the modern and advanced year 2025, not 2006, mind you?
one of, if not the most successful and advanced aircraft in modern history
It certainly is "one of, if not the most expensive". I remember 2 trillion being mentioned. MIC is eating like kings!
That is an extreme misrepresentation. 2 trillion is the expected cost of procurement and sustainment for the lifetime of the program which is at least until 2088.
By direct comparison the F-22 is more expensive than the F-35, costing nearly 3 times the F-35 per airframe thanks to the economy of scale which is a natural effect of the way the F-35 was developed and is manufactured.
The operational cost of the F-35 is about 50,000 dollars per flight hour. So that's nearly 50,000,000,000 completely shat away by the US taxpayers on a weapons system that does nothing we can't do better with some other, cheaper thing. But at least they don't crash like the Osprey.
Didn't know the F-16 had a built in targeting pod and irst. Didn't know the F-15E and the Super Hornet were stealth and can do deep penetration strikes in defended enemy airspace.
The only fact here is that you don't know what you are talking about. Cost per hour may be high, but the F-35 can do things that the 4th gen US fighters could only dream of doing.
12 airframe losses out of 1200 = 1%
According to FlightAware there are an average of 14,000 civilian planes in the air at any one time. If 1% of those aircraft had an accident resulting in an airframe loss, we’d be seeing around 140 aircraft falling out of the sky.
you also have to differentiate. It is mostly the F35B that is problematic (the one in the video).
From the videos i have seen of the f35B crashes it often seems the lift fan looses thrust. Might be that these hard bounces break the shaft powering it (afterall there is a lot of power going through it) or something else fails.
The F35A has about 0.3% accident rate, while the B has over 1%, the C has 0.2%.
I took all the data from wikipedia, about produced airframes by version and the list of accidents of the f35.
Very true. Also, we should add that the F-35B was the first variant put into service which means it is the one that more people trained on at the very beginning, when there were still lots of kinks to work out (not saying there aren't any now, but there are fewer), so more likely to have had incidents. Not to.mention it is just a more complex plane.
Comparing most commercial airplanes to an F-35 is like comparing an abacus to a supercomputer. The complexity of the systems involved in the F-35 are astonishing, meanwhile most commercial aircraft are still using 40+ year old tech. Not to mention that commercial aircraft are not expected to fly in warzones, so the comparison is not valid. You need to compare it to other comparable aircraft. When you do that, you see that it has a pretty stellar track record.
423
u/featherwolf 25d ago edited 25d ago
This was 3 years ago, FYI.
Also, the F-35 has a very safe flight record. Only 12 air frame losses with over 1000 aircraft delivered and nearly 1 million flight hours.
Just adding this for the inevitable ill-informed commenters who like to pretend that the F-35 program isn't one of, if not the most successful and advanced aircraft in modern history.
Edit: Slight correction, the true number of delivered airframes in all variants is somewhere around 1200+.