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F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sharpey
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Baz said:
However, it comes with a political price.  Mostly buried inside NORAD, to be sure, but still there.  Disclaimer: shaped by my experience in the Bi-National Planning Group, created after 9/11 to study the Canadian US North American Defense Relationship.

Second disclaimer: there is a feeling (rightly or wrongly) amongst some in the RCAF (and I personally rather be in the RCN, but they'd ignore us as well) that there are two Air Forces: one that would ignore almost anything to ensure we have a "world class" Fighter Force, and one that makes do with the scraps that fall off the table.


I think the fighter force has had to make due for a lot of years with scraps... and, with the exception of maybe a couple of years in the 1950s (with the Sabre) and the mid 1980s (immediately after we deployed the CF-18), we were never on the cutting edge of capabilities. I think the past decade it has enjoyed better funding, but that's generally an aberration, and perhaps an acknowledgement of the force's importance. Nevertheless, if the current plans hold true, the RCAF will retain the CF-18 to 2025, at which point it will be antiquated.


In between those periods we soldiered on with the CF-101-104-5 combination into the 1970s, which was antiquated at best. As far back as 1964 the RCAF wanted to replace those aircraft with the F-4, but had to keep them and got the CF-5 instead. Our CF-18s were not much better for a significant portion of their lives. After purchasing the aircraft, DND elected not to pursue any major updates of the aircraft, despite the rapidly changing technological and operational environment.  The growing incapability of our aircraft became quite evident in the 1990s, specifically as a result of several rotations into the Balkans. Our radios were insecure and posed a potential security risk for allied operations. Our computers at the time could only handle air to air or air to ground modes, not both. Moreover we were limited in our ability to deliver PGMs, as our low cost Wartime PGM program only bought us a dozen targeting pods, so we had less than six in the field. Those realizations pushed DND to select the ECP583 upgrade from the US Marines to update our aircraft. Even then we failed to buy the whole package: we didn't update the EW system (only the RWR), pushed back selecting an advanced A2A missile.

I know that a number of corners of the military which would quite welcome such attention. However I also think that the fighter force is likely Canada's most active foreign military instrument, (other than perhaps our SF, DART, frigates, or transport operations). With the exception of the Navy frigates, I would argue that the Air Force requires very high levels of interoperability to operate effectively, and that requires regular updates. There is also a greater threat level: OP Reassurance illustrated the potential risks of operating against a near peer opponent for many pilots. I think all of that makes for an easier budget justification than for medium weight wheeled vehicles or something else.

Baz said:
Editted to add: my last thought may be tainted by history.  It was a long time ago, but a big part of the reason the Arrow was cancelled was because it was consuming almost half of the entire Defence Budget, and a lot of the RCAF was perfectly happy with that.  The other services, not so much...

I don't think that's a fair comparison, as the nature of senior leadership relations back then was different. With the Chiefs of Staff, each of the service commands were basically set up to compete for defence priorities, so everybody put forward plans that were wholly unsustainable. It was then left to the minister to decide. This situation was one of the big factors to behind the push towards Unification. Saying that the other service commands weren't happy with the budget allocation was par for the course in this period.

I also think it is important to note that the Arrow was not just a military program, but a massive industrial and political effort pushed by the government to make Canada a world leader in aeronautics. This wasn't a seamless relationship between the air force and industry: Avro's poor performance on aspects of the CF-100 earned them significant disgruntlement from air force staff.

tomahawk6 said:
Buy F-35C's instead of the A model solves the problem does it not ?

Its not that much more. The F-35 in a long range configuration (Only one or two AAMs) has a unrefuelled range of around 1500nm with an approach reserve. 
 
Its not that much more. The F-35 in a long range configuration (Only one or two AAMs) has a unrefuelled range of around 1500nm with an approach reserve. 

Which is why forward bases in the north must be maintained and more developed as well.  I doubt very much if there will be a tanker readily available north of Rankin on every occasion that a/c are launched from Cold Lake but 1500nm is a respectable distance if there is a runway available at the end of it all.  However if you are talking about a full weapons load as would be required during any crisis or threat AND north of 60 in January we need to consider maybe some other options?
 
HB_Pencil said:
F-35s can refuel from boom only. In reality the KC-135 will probably be out of service before we get the F-35 or any other aircraft, so much of this is moot.

I never claimed otherwise... I'm not really sure why this is an issue. Sure if we get the F-35 we won't be able to boom with our CC-130H based in the FOLs, but that's not quite a big loss from what I've heard. Most next generation fighters' range will likely make up for that loss Moreover, we will have greater access to the USAF's tankers based at Eielson as the KC-46 program spools up (or we select the F-35), which is more valuable for very long range intercepts. Perhaps Supersonic Max can chime in and fill in some more of the details here.

Again, our Polaris tanker fleet is really intended for expeditionary operations, not domestic ops. We don't have the number of aircraft or (more importantly) personnel needed to keep them on alert.

Apologies, HB.  The airfield point was in response to someone else. 

Harrigan
 
SupersonicMax said:
It is in the US interests to defend North America.  I don't see how this would not be a priority our southern neighbours.  Making a couple of tankers available for us is not going to break them. In fact, during OIF when tankers were a premium in the Gulf, they still had tankers available to us.  Because it was in their National interest.  Right now, we are very limited in what tanker we can use:  they have to have a Boom Drogue Adapter installed (it is not a permanent mod despite what Harrigan said).  Only a few are fitted with them on a regular basis (in CONUS and AK).  Regardless of what we buy, we will still rely on US assets for tanking for NORAD.

The CC-130T is a tactical tanker that we use for Strategic/Operational purposes.  I transited across the ocean being drug by a Herc on a couple of occasions and it turns a 6 hours flight into a 10 hours one. Hardly efficient.

The CC-150T is an operational tanker (ideal for use during an operation like Impact, shared amongst a pool of coalition tankers although it lacks the dual systems).  We also use it for strategic purposes (dragging fighters across) but it lacks the offload a true strategic tanker needs.  We need 3 hops to make it to the Middle East with 2 aircraft. 

I hope we get the new US tanker.  I tanked on both the KC-767 and KC-30A and they have an enormous offload, dual systems, can go high and fast and are easy to tank on (as opposed to the KC-135 which is a nightmare to tank on).  They are true Strategic tankers.

If I was in charge and money was no object, I would get single seat F-15E with conformal tanks.  You wouldn't need a tanker to go up North, state of the art EW and radar, loads of weapons stations and multi-role.  But that would be way more expensive than the F-35...

I didn't say it was a permanent mod, Max.  I said it was a specially-modded aircraft, which it is.  Any KC-135 can tank a CF-18, but only if it is using one of the limited sets of adapters (I couldn't recall the actual name for them).  My point was that not all the existing fleet of KC-135's can respond to a Canadian request for tanking (on short-notice) for exactly the reasons you have pointed out.

Harrigan
 
Nor can boom-only equipped KCs support any of the other allied aircraft with a probe. It's a non event when there are enough KCs with drogue.  Next bone to pick? ::)

When people come back with a comparison between 150 ELE and FFCP in-service, then we can discuss if there actually is an issue, or whether the hew and cry is much ado about nothing...
 
Airbus is apparently supporting the A310s through 2050 (http://www.aviationtoday.com/regions/usa/Airbus-Expects-That-A300A310-Fleet-Will-Achieve-Average-35-Years-of-Life_14595.html)

However, we don't put our aircraft through anything like the cycles that commercial operators do; narrowbody commerical airliners like the CC-150 will do 9+ flight hours daily, or about 3300 flight hours per year.  Ours do significantly less; a 2006 CRS audit suggests the entire fleet of five aircraft was doing about 5000 hours per year (http://www.forces.gc.ca/assets/FORCES_Internet/docs/en/about-reports-pubs-audit-eval/p0727.pdf); with reductions in YFR since then, it's likely that our aircraft are doing less than 25% of what Air Canada or other operators would be doing.
 
Good2Golf said:
Nor can boom-only equipped KCs support any of the other allied aircraft with a probe. It's a non event when there are enough KCs with drogue.  Next bone to pick? ::)

When people come back with a comparison between 150 ELE and FFCP in-service, then we can discuss if there actually is an issue, or whether the hew and cry is much ado about nothing...

Well, OK, if we are content to simply rely on the US for all of our AAR requirements in future, then there is no problem.  Personally I think there is value in us having our own organic AAR capability.

Harrigan
 
Harrigan said:
Well, OK, if we are content to simply rely on the US for all of our AAR requirements in future, then there is no problem.  Personally I think there is value in us having our own organic AAR capability.

Harrigan

CC-150T and CF-188s are compatible now - no issue, and won't be an issue for the next tenth of a century... 

What matters when the CC-150 and CF-188 are no longer in service is that the fighter-tanker issue, whatever the CC- or the CF- designators for the respective capabilities are, has been resolved.  You appear to be prejudging that the CC-150T will be what services the CF-1XX and that is not necessarily the case.
 
USMC testing:

Lockheed F-35B’s reliability found lacking in shipboard testing

By Tony Capaccio
Bloomberg News       

The Marine version of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter demonstrated poor reliability in a 12-day exercise at sea, according to the military’s top testing officer.

Six F-35Bs, the most complex version of the aircraft being built in west Fort Worth, were available for flights only half the time needed, Michael Gilmore, the Defense Department’s director of operational testing, said in a memo obtained by Bloomberg News. A Marine Corps spokesman said the readiness rate was more than 65 percent.

While the exercise on the USS Wasp amphibious assault ship resulted in useful training for Marine and Navy personnel, it also documented that “shipboard reliability” and maintenance “were likely to present significant near-term challenges,” Gilmore wrote in the July 22 report.

The assessment, submitted to Frank Kendall, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, said that “Marine maintainers had rapid, ready access to spare parts from shore” and “received significant assistance” from Lockheed personnel and subcontractors.

Even with these advantages, “aircraft reliability was poor enough that it was difficult for the Marines to keep more than two or three of the six embarked jets in a flyable status on any given day,” he wrote.

The challenges to keeping the aircraft flying “will be substantially tougher when the aircraft first deploys” on an operational mission under more trying conditions, he said.

That assessment comes as Gen. Joseph Dunford, the Marine Corps commandant, is poised to decide as soon as this week whether to declare the plane ready for limited combat operations. The Marine version must make short takeoffs from ships and vertical landings like a helicopter...
http://www.star-telegram.com/news/business/article29191720.html

Mark
Ottawa

 
USAF view:

Air Force Secretary Acknowledges Wide Range of Problems with F-35

Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James has admitted to a wide range of past and present problems with the F-35 while maintaining that the fifth-general will eventually guarantee the U.S. continued air supremacy over rivals.

"The biggest lesson I have learned from the F-35 is never again should we be flying an aircraft while we're building it," James said at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado last week.

In development stages, "People believed we could go faster, cheaper, better" by designing and building the F-35 concurrently, "and that the degree of concurrency would work. Indeed it has not worked as well as we had hoped and that's probably the understatement of the day," James said.

...she noted that there were additional challenges to making the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II operational. "I would sum it up in one word – software," James said, noting the 24 million lines of code in the aircraft...
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/07/28/air-force-secretary-acknowledges-wide-range-problems-f35.html

Mark
Ottawa
 
Let's see: aircraft line opened and production commences while aircraft still undergoing significant development.  Tremendous problems with schedule, technical issues causing further delays, all resulting in a grossly over budget aircraft.

But enough about the Avro Arrow.  What about the F-35?
 
Meanwhile closing of BAE's Typhoon line could pretty well take it out of consideration for new RCAF fighter:

BAE Systems to 'gap' Typhoon production in 2018

BAE Systems will have to 'gap' production of the Eurofighter Typhoon in 2018, regardless of whether further orders can be secured in the interim, IHS Jane's was told on 28 July.

Speaking at the company's manufacturing facility at Warton, production manager Matt Heritage, said that Typhoon assembly will have to cease at the end of the current run, although the option remains to restart the line should further orders be secured...

In terms of the remaining production backlog for the Typhoon, BAE Systems expects to have built 24 aircraft by the end of this year, with 18 to follow in 2016, 22 in 2017, and a final four in 2018. While this rate could be slowed down to extend the production run, Heritage explained that the company is working to a customer-driven plan that it needs to discharge. With BAE Systems building more Typhoons than the rest of the consortium combined, all of the national production lines should close within about 12 months of each other...
http://www.janes.com/article/53271/bae-systems-to-gap-typhoon-production-in-2018

Mark
Ottawa
 
dapaterson said:
Or the Twin Otter with a cupola mounted GPMG.

7.62 may not have enough punch.  Could borrow the M3M HMGs from the Griffons.
 
The French havent had much success pedaling the Rafale,a squadron might be had for cheap.
 
tomahawk6 said:
The French havent had much success pedaling the Rafale,a squadron might be had for cheap.

Maybe they could throw one in if we scraped together enough for the two "Russian" Mistrals  :)
 
tomahawk6: French actually have had considerable success selling Rafale this year--Egypt, India, Qatar--could be hard to get slots on line:

Rafale Combat Jet Is Suddenly En Vogue
http://aviationweek.com/paris-air-show-2015/rafale-combat-jet-suddenly-en-vogue

Dassault To Double Rafale Production
http://www.defenseworld.net/news/13506/Dassault_To_Double_Rafale_Production#.Vbj-rUbCNdg

Dassault Prepares for Possible Additional Rafale Orders
http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/policy-budget/industry/2015/07/23/dassault-prepares-possible-additional-rafale-orders/30585575/

Mark
Ottawa
 
unit cost is high though and the French are desperate otherwise the unit cost for the French Air Force will be through the roof.
 
Since I am a simple grunt and appreciate seeing the occasional aircraft zooming overhead to smite my enemies, my view of how fighters and multi role aircraft work is obviously a bit skewed. This article suggests that most people who are commenting on the F-35 program and fighter aviation in general are barking up the wrong tree (or even wandering around in the wrong forest), and also has some interesting observations which blend into the conceptions of Hybrid or 4GW warfare, and how that will affect the future of military aviation:

http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2015/07/28/an-affair-of-the-mind/?print=1

An Affair of the Mind
Posted By Richard Fernandez On July 28, 2015 @ 7:16 pm In Infowar,War | 66 Comments

The controversy surrounding the F-35 is fundamentally an extension of the debate over what a future fighter should be.  Recently the aircraft made news when it was officially announced that the airframe couldn’t dogfight worth a damn [1].  The standard riposte is that dogfighting as a form of aerial combat, stopped being relevant a long time ago.

Perhaps the best advocate for dogfighting-is-dead point of view isn’t a paper for the F-35 but a paper which argues that air combat is fundamentally changing.  Perhaps the F-35 is not the best tool for coming era, but neither is the super-dogfighter many in the public seem to crave. In a PDF article titled Trends in Air-to-air Combat [2], John Stillion of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments argues that the era of pointing the airframe at moving point in space is over.  It never really existed. Even during the age of gun kills, most victories arose from a dominant situational awareness and the ability to initiate the fight and disengage at will. The dominant importance of getting in first did not change in Vietnam.

detailed analysis of 112 air combat engagements during the Vietnam War conducted by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) in the 1970s concluded that 80 percent of aircrew shot down were unaware of the impending attack. Surprise, the tactical outcome of superior SA, is so important to success in air combat that it is assumed in the modern USAF air combat mantra of “First Look, First Shot, First Kill.” Despite vast changes in aircraft, sensor, communication, and weapon capabilities over the past century, the fundamental goal of air combat has remained constant: leverage superior SA to sneak into firing position, destroy the opposing aircraft, and depart before other enemy aircraft can react

Being seen first is usually a death sentence, especially in an era of high off-boresight, long range missiles.  Stillion notes that since Vietnam it’s been missiles all the way.  The last gun kill by anybody was in 1988.

The use of guns in aerial combat virtually ended after the Yom Kippur War in late 1973. Out of 498 victory claims since that time, 440 (88 percent) have been credited to AAMs and only thirty to guns.39 The last gun kill of one jet combat aircraft by another occurred in May of 1988 when an Iranian F-4E downed an Iraqi Su-22M with 20 mm cannon fire.

Also of note is the near-disappearance of the rear-aspect-only IR missile victories and the reduction in proportion of victories achieved by all-aspect missiles such as the AIM-9L/M. Over the past two decades, the majority of aerial victories have been the result of BVR engagements where the victor almost always possessed advantages in sensor and weapon range and usually superior support from “offboard information sources” such as GCI radar operators or their airborne counterparts in Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACS) aircraft. This is significant, as it suggests the competition for SA is heavily influenced by the relative capabilities of the opponents’ electronic sensors, electronic countermeasures (ECM), and network links between sensor, command and control (C2), and combat aircraft nodes

In the first Gulf War, all coalition kills were scored via missile, and it’s only air to air loss was an F/A-18 to another BVR missile fired by an Iraqi Mig-25. Interestingly the less air combat depended on individual skill, the greater the American advantage in integrated combat systems proved to be. The US air to air kill ratio in Vietnam was 2:1. By the first Gulf War it was 33:1.  The death of the dogfight, he argued, worked wildly in America’s favor.

Today, with missiles able to shoot directly behind a fighter, maneuver is completely secondary to situational awareness, Stillion argues. The next step is to carry trends to their logical conclusion and let unmanned aircraft carry the weapons leaving the stealthy, manned fighter to control them.  This division of labor is driven by the fact that unmanned aircraft can outperform and out-turn any conceivable manned fighter. Physics guarantees it.

If the future air combat environment consists almost exclusively of BVR missile duels or, eventually, directed-energy weapons engagements, achieving a decisive SA advantage will increasingly depend on the relative ability of the opposing sides to acquire and process longrange sensor data and rapidly integrate it with offboard information provided via data networks.

One way to think about the end of dogfighting is to consider directed energy weapons. You can’t outturn a laser, not even in principle  so you let the unmanned vehicles do the actual shooting. But how do you control what might be called a pilot’s tactical swarm? While artificial intelligence can create increasingly capable unmanned aircraft, keeping a man in the loop requires putting him as near the action as possible. Data lags and latency make it impossible to control an air fight over the Pacific, for example, from an airbase in the US.

Your only chance is to control it from a flying, stealthy computer, like an F-35 positioned to the rear of the swarm. Interestingly enough, this provides another ground for criticizing the F-35. The optimal “mother ship” for a UCAS (Unmanned Combat Air System) is a stealthy, bomber sized platform with dozens of very long ranged air to air missiles controlling its own swarm. From this point of view the real problem with the F-35 isn’t that it can’t dogfight, but it is too small and short legged to do the job right.

But the F-35 airplane America has bought and its defenders planned to sorta-kinda use it in this way, if only to justify it.  If it works will be quite revolutionary. Any wargame between a Eurofighter class airplanes and a swarm of UCAS or information dominant opponents results in a complete massacre. Ideally the forward edge of US airpower would consist of UCAS aircraft supported further back by tankers, long range missile platforms and information assets.  Such a combination would easily sweep the field.

Of course Stillion could be getting it all wrong. As Malcolm Davis of the National Interest [3] writes, once the situational awareness dominance goes away the remaining uncoordinated aircraft will be toast. They will have lost their key edge and just be slow targets lugging around disconnected computers.

The underlying basis for current assumptions about the ascendance of long-range air-to-air combat and the demise of the dogfight is that U.S. and allied forces will always have a clear and sustainable ‘knowledge edge’ over any adversary in a manner that bestows superior situational awareness to permit unrestricted use of BVRAAMs. In this regard, the true success of the F-35 in tactical air-to-air warfare may in fact depend on an ability to preserve a knowledge edge at the strategic level in the face of determined efforts by future adversaries to decisively win an information battle at the outset of any future conflict.

General Dai Qingmin, PLA, states that a key goal of the PLA’s approach to INEW is to disrupt the normal operation of enemy battlefield information systems, while protecting one’s own, with the objective of seizing information superiority. Therefore, winning in the air against the PLAAF may be determined as much by which side wins these information warfare campaigns, as through success in tactical beyond-visual range air to air engagements. Imagine no data links between the F-35s and the AWACS; AESA radars on an E-7A Wedgetail spoofed; ASAT attacks that bring down strategic communications or computer-network attacks that strike logistics or which jam GPS signals, and the first shots fired are not missiles but satellites silenced by computer hackers or ground-based jamming. Furthermore there will be an incentive to strike quickly and decisively, with an information ‘battle of the first salvo’ effect emerging. Without the flexibility bestowed by these systems, the F-35 pilot must rely on on-board sensor systems such as its AESA Radar and Electro-Optical Targeting System (EOTS) to detect, track and engage targets which increase the detectability of the aircraft and potentially bring the F-35 into the envelope of an opponent’s within visual range systems.

This means intangible information assets have become as important as battleships and aircraft carriers in December, 1941.  A Chinese “Pearl Harbor” strike against US satellites and information systems could be conducted without killing a single American. But would the public react the same way? Would an administration similar to the current  regard that as casus belli? Or will it ignore it like the OPM hack and just move on?

There will be no burning battleships, no tattered fluttering flag waving defiantly in the smoke filled sky.  The reality of modern day information combat is that China can win a war without killing a single person or disrupting a single reality TV show. What if America could lose World War 3 and not even know it, especially if it relies on its politicians to tell it an attack has occurred.

This is already an issue. Bill Gertz of the Washington Free Beacon [4] reports that “the United States will continue to suffer increasingly damaging cyber attacks against both government and private sector networks as long as there is no significant response, according to a recent US intelligence community assessment.”

Disclosure of the intelligence assessment, an analytical consensus of 16 US spy agencies, comes as the Obama administration is debating how to respond to a major cyber attack against the Office of Personnel Management. Sensitive records on 22.1 million federal workers, including millions cleared for access to secrets, were stolen by hackers linked to China’s government. …

Last week, Adm. Mike Rogers, commander of the US Cyber Command, said the increase in state-sponsored cyber attacks is partly the result of a perception that “there’s not a significant price to pay” for such attacks.

Privately, administration officials said the assessment appears to be an indirect criticism of the administration’s approach to cyber attacks that has emphasized diplomatic and law enforcement measures instead of counter-cyber attacks.

The bottom line is that the F-35′s combat utility is partly dependent on whether the US is willing to embark on a long term strategy of using and depending on informational capabilities.  If information warfare and not dogfighting is the wave of the future, it may destabilize the world in ways we only dimly understanding. Scientists are already warning [5] against the next “nuclear proliferation” danger, the “arms race in artificial intelligence”.

Scientists and tech experts – including professor Stephen Hawking and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak – warned Tuesday of a global arms race with weapons using artificial intelligence.

In an open letter with hundreds of signatories, the experts argued that if any major military power pushes ahead with development of autonomous weapons, “a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow.”

Some people have argued in favor of robots on the battlefield, saying their use could save lives. Such weapons are still years away.

But the scientists warned that, unlike nuclear weapons, once they are developed they will require no costly or hard-to-obtain raw materials – making it possible to mass-produce them.

“It will only be a matter of time until they appear on the black market and in the hands of terrorists, dictators wishing to better control their populace, warlords wishing to perpetrate ethnic cleansing, etc.,” the letter said.

Our political class does not excel in managing artificial intelligence.  It is superlative however in expanding artificial stupidity.  To return to the question: is the F-35 a good replacement for the F-16? Perhaps Stillion doesn’t provide the answer, but it is equally fair to say perhaps that’s not even the question.
 
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