Lockheed’s F-35 Disaster Have the problems with a subpar fighter plane cost the Lockheed Corporation and maybe the U.S., lost sales? First let’s look at the plane itself. The Defense Department has been told the following according to some news outlets and that is the operational suitability of the F-35 Joint Strike fighter is not operationally suitable. Many people have known since it was first produced it had a lot of problems and was slower and less maneuverable than planes from other countries. One of the most ridiculous things I heard was a reply by an U.S. Air Force Officer about this. He said something to the affect it would be firing its weapons from relatively far away so it didn’t matter. As I have said in the past if this is all the military wanted, a platform to fire weapons they could use any existing plane and increase its detection capability. Since 2014 fleets of F-35s haven’t been able to be brought above 50 percent readiness+ according to breakingdefense.com. According to Popular Mechanics the F-35 still has almost one thousand deficiencies. Can you imagine having a car which had even ten percent of those. You would probably never want to take it out. Now imagine a war plane which could be attacked by superior fighter planes and as you are trying to defend yourself you find they are too fast, too maneuverable and you are too prone to things going wrong. The helmet contains a heads-up display but it can reduce the pilots vision. To make matters worse the F-35 is the most expensive program for buying fighter planes there ever was. This means we are getting inferior planes at an incredibly high cost. The military tells us not to worry because they will fix the problems. Would you buy a car on the promise even though it had many problems they would be fixed over time? I know I wouldn’t. One has to wonder how we ever could have been convinced to go along with this terrible plane. Some say it is because of the system. Lobbyists spread the wealth around and this means those that have the most money and best connections usually get what they want. It is often not the best weapon which gets picked to produce but the one made in the most powerful senators state or something like that. Knowing the problems with the plane why are our allies buying it? I guess they want to stay in our good graces, but sales may be slipping. The main point of the plane is stealth, but progress is being made in detecting stealth and no one knows how long it will be before these planes will be completely and accurately detected. Esquire has called the F-35 fighter bomber a nonfunctional, money-sucking nightmare. The average repair time for a F-35 is 172 days. Esquire also stated about 22 percent of the planes are not flying because of lack of parts. GAO has reported that maintaining the fleet of F-35s will cost us 1.12 trillion dollars over their lifetime. Italy has cancelled their order for F-35s. Britain wants to get together with Saab and build their own planes and who can blame them after watching the F-35 debacle? Canada cancelled its F-35 order and ordered F-18s instead. The F-18 is the Super Hornet. Canada then cancelled the F-18s and decided to buy Australian jets instead. The planes would still be F-18s but would be used. Strangely the purchase has to be approved by the U.S. government. I don’t know if it is true, but one website states the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Marines are going to cancel their F-35 order. The truth is the government not only needs to cancel the program but make Lockheed responsible for all the defects and examine the procurement process and get rid of those who are responsible for this purchase. New rules have to be created for purchases. If a finished product cannot be delivered on time than the government should have the right to refuse the product and void the contract. Maybe there could be a mechanism for asking for an extension but it has to be for good reason with a very good chance of completion of the development of the device by the end of that extension. As far as building things and then asking for more money along the way that has to be stopped because it has become pro forma. What I mean is it is expected and almost automatically granted and the contractors know and expect this, so the bids for the jobs are not really what we are going to pay. One has to wonder why Israel is buying so many F-35s. One reason may be because they are bought with aid money from the United States and there may be other breaks being given. Israel wanted to increase its fleet of F-35s to 50 planes. Perhaps even the F-35 is better than any plane the Arab countries or Iran could put up against Israel? It is said they will be paying 110 million dollars per plane for thirty-three and then get a substantial reduction in price on the rest. Congress has approved a 38 billion-dollar ten-year military aid package to Israel so I guess they had no choice. Turkey wanted to buy F-35s but this sale may not take place. The Netherlands is cutting their order for the F-35. The F-35 is 167 billion dollars over budget so far and seven years behind schedule. It still has software problems. The Motherboard website states it has a bulkhead that breaks under stress. Some are saying the F-35 could be the last fighter ever built because drone technology is advancing so rapidly. I am not sure I believe this will be the case, but who knows? At this point the decision to cancel the F-35 fighter has almost been made for us and it is NO. The reason for that answer is we have put so much money into the program already. Another reason is we do not have a replacement for the F-35. I disagree with this reasoning, but I am in the minority. I can’t see putting pilots at risk in a defective airplane and as far as guarantees from the Pentagon about fixing the faults in the plane that is not worth anything because we have a pattern of defective devices and machines being ordered over the years. Does everything we buy have to be bought before it is ready and do we have to buy inferior devices just because they are new? Why can’t stealth aircraft be as performance oriented as non-stealth ones? Maybe we haven’t done enough research into this area. Perhaps assigning more powerful AI software to the problem could come up with better results and just maybe there is another way to accomplish stealth using some sort of plasma or electronic absorption of radar waves. It could also be the F-35 if error free might better serve a different role. Some have suggested using them in conjunction with high performance aircraft. I don’t know how that might work since the other aircraft wouldn’t be stealth. Anyway, the F-35 is not worthy of becoming a US fighter and should be abandoned.
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