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F-35 Beginning To Fade
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January 15, 2010: The U.S. Navy has been nervously watching as the costs of the new F-35C and F-35B carrier aircraft increase. It comes down to this. Currently, it costs the navy, on average, $19,000 an hour to operate its AV-8 vertical takeoff and F-18C fighter aircraft. It costs 63 percent more to operate the F-35C (which will replace the F-18C) and the F-35B (which will replace the AV-8). These costs include buying the aircraft, training and maintaining the pilots, the aircraft and purchasing expendable items (fuel, spare parts, munitions.) Like the F-22, which recently had production capped at less than 200 aircraft, the capabilities, as superior as they were, did not justify the much higher costs. The F-35, at least for the navy, is headed in the same direction. The navy can go ahead with the more recent F-18E, and keep refurbishing, or even building, the AV-8. Politics, and lobbying by the F-35 manufacturer, will probably keep the F-35 headed for fleet service, no matter what the cost.

The 27 ton F-35 is armed with an internal 25mm cannon and four internal air-to-air missiles (or two missiles and two smart bombs). Plus four external smart bombs and two missiles. All sensors are carried internally, and max weapon load is 6.8 tons. The aircraft is very stealthy when just carrying internal weapons.

Development costs for the new U.S. F-35 fighter-bomber has grown by a third, to $60 billion, over the last few years. That means the average development cost of the estimated 5,000 F-35s to be built, will be about $12 million each. The additional development costs are accompanied by an additional delays before the aircraft enters service. Production costs will average about $84 million. With a share of development costs, that makes the per aircraft cost $96 million. This cost estimate continues to rise.

Like the F-22 fighter, the F-35 is stealthy, and is stuffed with lots of new technology. Most (about 60 percent) of the F-35s built will be used by foreign nations. The rising cost of the F-35 brings with it reluctance to buy as many aircraft currently planned. The success of smart bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan has also made it clear that fewer aircraft will be needed in the future. In any event, it's likely that F-35s will end up costing more than $100 million each.

 

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blogagog    I Love Strategy page   1/15/2010 6:32:08 AM
I love your site, but there are too many commas!  Not a post goes by where at least one (sometimes many) commas are used where none are needed.  I'm using exclamation points to highlight my point:
 
"Currently, it costs the navy, on average,..."
 The second two are fine, but the first one is just wrong.
 
"Politics, and lobbying by the F-35 manufacturer, will probably keep the F-35..."
 There is no reason to use either comma here.
 
There are three more examples on this page alone.  I'm trying not to whine too much because I really enjoy your site.  It contains information that I can't find anywhere else.  Please consider this to be a friendly request to use less commas in your articles.  It's certainly not annoying enough for me to stop reading strategy page, but it IS pretty annoying.
 
Thanks in advance!
 
Kevin
 
 
 
 
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Dave_in_Pa    Two complaints   1/15/2010 12:56:23 PM
I have to second blogagog's complaint about chronic punctuation and add my complaint about improper capitalization.  We constantly see examples such as "the US army" versus "It's now Winter in Afghanistan".  ATTN Writers:  general persons, places or things are not capitalized.  Specific persons, places or things are capitalized.  It would be "the US Army" and "It's now winter in Afghanistan". 
 
It's not pedantic to be darned annoyed by poor grammar and punctuation. Nor is it to be unexpected when a writer with poor grasp of grammar and punctuation is therefore taken less seriously, however great his or her knowledge of the subject matter may be. 
 
I suggest that the writers at this website read and keep at their desk a copy of the classic, short grammar text "Elements of Style" by the late Professor William Strunk, Professor of English at Cornell University.  His short, pithy book, published in 1919, is available for inexpensive purchase and is in the public domain, therefore downloadable for free as a pdf at many websites, including here. 'Nuff said!
 
******
 
Now, to business.  The author states, "The 27 ton F-35 is armed with an internal 25mm cannon and..." 
 
This is only partly correct.  The F-35A, to be used by the US Air Force and other air forces, does have an internal 25 mm cannon.  However, the F-35 B STOVL and F-35 C naval variants do not have an internal cannon. Following the examples of aerial combat lessons learned then promptly forgotten from all our wars since World War Two, the B and C variants were designed without an internal cannon.  Disregarding the poor performance of such bolt-on weapons going all the way back to the F-4 in the Vietnam War, the designers have made a 25 mm cannon pod available for external mounting. (For quickest verification of this information, see the Wiki article on the F-35.)
 
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King Albert    Bolt-ons not always bad   1/15/2010 2:02:47 PM
I agree with the criticism of the F-35C not having an internal gun, but bolt on guns aren't necessarily a bad idea. The F-4 bolt-on was a rushed adhoc affair without proper mountings or sites. OTOH Sea Harriers used their 30mm gun pods effectively in the Falklands War as it was designed for the pod to begin with. The F-35C/B pod will probably work well.
 
I would also argue that comparing the F-35C to the F-18C is odd at best as the Navy will never buy another F-18C as it's considered an obsolete design.
 
 
 
 
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davod    Punctuation   1/15/2010 4:00:49 PM
 

"The comma tells the reader to pause, just as the blinking yellow light tells a driver to slow down and proceed with caution. Some writers can tell where a comma is needed by reading their prose aloud and inserting a comma where there seems to be a clear pause in the sentence. This may work much of the time if you read the sentence carefully and accurately. However, this procedure is not the most precise way to approach comma usage. Below are four general ways to use commas with a reasonable degree of certainty."
 
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C3I2       1/16/2010 12:23:32 AM
Ah, yes. Sweden to the rescue:
 
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&newspaperUserId=27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7&plckPostId=Blog%3a27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3a5635810b-c8ba-474a-bd69-376b1dbf228e&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest
 
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sjdoc    On punctuation   1/17/2010 12:27:09 AM
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I'm afraid that Dunnigan has been writing this way - with adventitious commas all to hellangone over the place - for decades, and he's not about to stop.  
 
(If it's not you who's been doing this, Jim, I beg your pardon.  But it seems a problem I've seen since you started StrategyPage.com, and nobody posts more stuff on here than you do.)
 
I suspect that the fine editing work on Dunnigan's published material wrings this out, but what you read on StrategyPage is pretty much dashed off.  I take the content as valuable, and don't quibble with the overload of commas interspersed therein, and maybe everybody else ought to do so, too.
 
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