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Straus Military Reform Project

September 8, 2008

Joint Strike Fighter: The Latest Hotspot in the U.S.

Defense Meltdown

While its illusion as an "affordable" multi-role fighter-bomber is alive and well in

Washington D.C., the F-35 "Joint Strike Fighter" is already a disaster, and the bad news
has barely begun to roll in. Internationally recognized combat aircraft designer Pierre
Sprey and Straus Military Reform Project Director Winslow Wheeler summarize the many
failures in a new opinion piece that appears in the Sept. 10, 2008 issue of Janes Defence
Weekly and is reproduced below.

"Joint Strike Fighter: The Latest Hotspot in the U.S. Defense Meltdown"

by Pierre M. Sprey and Winslow T. Wheeler

Politicians in the US are papering over serious problems in the country's armed forces.
Equating exposure of flaws with failure to 'support the troops', Congress, the presidential
candidates and think-tank pundits repeatedly
dub the US armed forces “the best in the world”. Behind this vapid rhetoric, a meltdown –
decades in the making – is occurring.

The collapse is occurring in all the armed forces, but it is most obvious in the US Air
Force (USAF). There, despite a much needed change in leadership, nothing is being done
to reverse he deplorable situation the air force has put itself into. The USAF's annual
budget is now in excess of USD 150 billion: well above what it averaged during the Cold
War. Despite the plentiful dollars, the USAF's inventory of tactical aircraft is smaller
today than it has ever been since the end of the Second World War.

At the same time, the shrunken inventory is older, on average, than it has been ever
before. Since George W Bush came to office in 2001, the air force has received a major
budget 'plus up', supposedly to address its problems. In January 2001 a projection of its
budgets showed USD 850 billion for 2001 to 2009. It actually received USD 1,059 billion
– not counting the additional billions (more than USD 80 billion) it also received to fund
its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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With the 'plus up' of more than USD 200 billion, the air force actually made its inventory
troubles worse: from 2001 to today, tactical aircraft numbers shrank by about 100 aircraft
and their average age increased from 15 years to 20, according to the Congressional
Budget Office.

Not to worry, the air force and its politicians assert, the solution is in hand; it is called the
F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. It will do all three tactical missions: air-to-ground
bombing, air-to-air combat and specialised close air support for ground troops – and there
will be tailored variants for the air force, navy and marines. Most importantly, it will be
'affordable' and, thus, the US can buy it in such large numbers that it will resolve all those
shrinking and ageing problems.

Baloney. When the first official cost and quantity estimate for the F-35 showed up on
Capitol Hill in 2001, the Department of Defense (DoD) predicted 2,866 units for USD 226
billion. That is a not inconsiderable USD 79 million for each aircraft. The latest official
estimate is for a smaller number of aircraft (2,456) to cost more (USD 299 billion). That
represents a 54 per cent increase in the per-unit cost to USD 122 million, and the
deliveries will be two years late. The Government Accountability Office reported in
March that the US can expect the costs to increase some more – perhaps by as much as
USD 38 billion – with deliveries likely to be delayed again, perhaps by another year. That
is just the start of the rest of the bad news. The price increases and schedule delays cited
above are for currently known problems. Unfortunately, the F-35 has barely begun its
flight-test programme, which means more problems are likely to be discovered – perhaps
even more serious than the serious engine, flight control, electrical and avionics glitches
found thus far.

Take the F-22 experience; it was in a similarly early stage of flight testing in 1998. Its
programme unit cost was then USD 184 million per aircraft but it climbed to a
breathtaking USD 355 million by 2008. Considering that the F-35 is even more complex (
19 million lines of computer code compared to 4 million, and three separate service
versions compared to one), the horrifying prospect of the F-35's unit cost doubling is not
outlandish. The last tri-service, tri-mission 'fighter' the US built, the F-111, tripled in cost
before being cut back to barely half the number originally contemplated.

The DoD currently plans to spend more than USD 10 billion to produce fewer than 100 F-
35s per year at peak production. USAF leaders would like to increase the production rate
and add in a few more F-22s. That plan is irresponsibly unaffordable (which contributed to
the recent departure of the Secretary of the Air Force and the Air Force Chief of Staff).
The unaffordability will become even more obvious when the unavoidable F-35 cost
increases emerge. The inevitable reaction, just as in past programmes, will be a slashing of
annual production, the opposite of the increase the air force needs to address its inventory
problems. The DoD fix is simple: test the F-35 less and buy more copies before the testing
is completed. Two test aircraft and hundreds of flight-test hours have been eliminated
from the programme, and there is now a plan to produce more than 500 copies before the
emasculated testing is finished. This approach will not fix the programme but it will help
paper over the problems and make the F-35 more cancellation proof in the Pentagon and
on Capitol Hill.

It gets even worse. Even without new problems, the F-35 is a 'dog.' If one accepts every

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performance promise the DoD currently makes for the aircraft, the F-35 will be:
"Overweight and underpowered: at 49,500 lb (22,450kg) air-to-air take-off weight with an
engine rated at 42,000 lb of thrust, it will be a significant step backward in thrust-to-
weight ratio for a new fighter. " At that weight and with just 460 sq ft (43 m2) of wing
area for the air force and Marine Corps variants, it will have a 'wing-loading' of 108 lb per
square foot. Fighters need large wings relative to their weight to enable them to
manoeuvre and survive. The F-35 is actually less manoeuvrable than the appallingly
vulnerable F-105 'Lead Sled' that got wiped out over North Vietnam in the Indochina War.

With a payload of only two 2,000 lb bombs in its bomb bay – far less than US Vietnam-
era fighters – the F-35 is hardly a first-class bomber either. With more bombs carried
under its wings, the F-35 instantly becomes 'non-stealthy' and the DoD does not plan to
seriously test it in this configuration for years. As a 'close air support' attack aircraft to
help US troops engaged in combat, the F-35 is a nonstarter. It is too fast to see the tactical
targets it is shooting at; too delicate and flammable to withstand ground fire; and it lacks
the payload and especially the endurance to loiter usefully over US forces for sustained
periods as they manoeuvre on the ground. Specialised for this role, the air force's existing
A-10s are far superior. However, what, the advocates will protest, of the F-35's two most
prized features: its 'stealth' and its advanced avionics? What the USAF will not tell you is
that 'stealthy' aircraft are quite detectable by radar; it is simply a question of the type of
radar and its angle relative to the aircraft. Ask the pilots of the two 'stealthy' F-117s that
the Serbs successfully attacked with radar missiles in the 1999 Kosovo air war.

As for the highly complex electronics to attack targets in the air, the F-35, like the F-22
before it, has mortgaged its success on a hypothetical vision of ultra-long range, radar-
based air-to-air combat that has fallen on its face many times in real air war. The F-35's
air-to-ground electronics promise little more than slicker command and control for the use
of existing munitions.

The immediate questions for the F-35 are: how much more will it cost and how many
additional problems will compromise its already mediocre performance? We will only
know when a complete and rigorous test schedule –not currently planned – is finished.
The F-35 is a bad deal that shows every sign of turning into a disaster as big as the F-111
fiasco of the 1960s.

In January the US will inaugurate a new president. If he is serious about US defences –

and courageous enough to ignore the corporate lobbies and their minions in Congress and
the think-tanks – he will ask some very tough questions. These will start with why an
increased budget buys a shrinking, ageing force. After that the new president will have to
take steps – unavoidably painful ones – to reverse the course the country is now on.

The man who best deserves to be inaugurated next January will actually start asking those
questions now.

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