What Is The F-35 Actually Supposed To Do?

Ryan Faith, VICE News: What Is the Pentagon's Multi-Billion Dollar F-35 Jet Actually Supposed to Do?

The F-35 Lighting II is the most expensive weapons program in the history of the human race, and production is now being kicked into high gear. The main Lockheed Martin factory for the F-35, located in Fort Worth, Texas, is beginning the long ramp-up to get to full-scale production, which is expected by 2019. The F-35 is supposed to replace in whole or in part a large number of different aircraft types and is intended to operate for at least 50 years.

So, naturally, one of the very first things people want to know is whether or not the plane is any damned good. The US taxpayer is footing a bill that, over the next several decades, will run several hundred billion dollars and involve buying a couple thousand aircraft, and critics have complained that the jack-of-all-trades F-35 is a master of none.

In a bid to get a handle on that, VICE News went to Naval Air Station Patuxent River (a.k.a. Pax River) in Maryland to talk to some F-35 test pilots and get a fundamental grip on why and how the plane will be used. The Navy is the second-biggest customer of the plane, after the US Air Force and before the Marines and several allied nations. It plans to replace most of its F-18 Hornets with it.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: Bottom line on this author's review of the F-35 .... a lot of reliance on new tech and avionics .... and an admission that in a dogfight the F-22 will be a better fighter. But is it worth the price tag and will it fulfil U.S. national security needs .... I still do not feel reassure.

Update: One more reason why the A-10 should not be replaced by the F-35 .... Function Over Form: The Case for Keeping The "Warthog" Over The F-35 (Cole Bourland, RCD/Modern War Institute).

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