Just bought an E wing, as this ship is a high cost tech marvel - which got me thinking about our F-35.

I hope it turns out better than the E-wing did in Star Wars lore..now with having to deal with the Russians.....AGAIN.

Since we have a large international community here, curious what you all think of procurement of this, shall I say, "wonder weapon"?

Hopefully this will be a somewhat serious discussion...

The f35 is a piece of junk that has been designed as a jack of all trades master of none and is outclassed by CURRENT Russian aircraft let alone future Russian fighters

E-Wings wouldn't be that great against the Russsians either!

Just bought an E wing, as this ship is a high cost tech marvel - which got me thinking about our F-35.

I hope it turns out better than the E-wing did in Star Wars lore..now with having to deal with the Russians.....AGAIN.

Since we have a large international community here, curious what you all think of procurement of this, shall I say, "wonder weapon"?

Hopefully this will be a somewhat serious discussion...

How many red dice does it throw?

The f35 is a piece of junk that has been designed as a jack of all trades master of none and is outclassed by CURRENT Russian aircraft let alone future Russian fighters

I see you're from the UK, what are you basing your info on?

Luke thought the Falcon was a piece of junk as well... I think it's safe to say off camera he apologized to Han admitting how terribly, terribly wrong he was.

Saw one take off the other day. So.freaking.cool.

Perhaps here somebody can tell me why the F35 and F22 both need exist? What's the difference and is one 'better' than the other?

F22 is a straight up air superiority fighter. F35 is a multi-role air-superiority/ground attack plane. It's not as good at air superiority as the F22, but it does more other stuff.

Perhaps here somebody can tell me why the F35 and F22 both need exist? What's the difference and is one 'better' than the other?

The F-35 was supposed to be a lot cheaper than the F-22 but considering the development hell I'm not so sure about that. If you could get 90% of the performance for 67% of the cost you could buy three instead of two and have more capacity.

If the Chinese and Russian fighters are better the can be a pretty simple reason for that; they've just borrowed so much of the initial work that the Americans have done that they can spend a little more to fix a few things and perhaps counter what the Americans have.

I hear they're also decommissioning A-10s in favor of F-35s and Q drones.

I think it's a foolish move. There's no better CAS fighter than an A-10.

The A-10 is one very unique plane. Long, straight wings and subsonic just aren't things people expect to see in combat aircraft these days. Unfortunately I can easily see where drones would be stealing its Thunder but thing sure carries one massive cannon.

I recall reading that the A-10 was built as a means of escalation to be NATO's counter to the USSR's massive production and increasing numbers in armored divisions during the Cold War. It was also designed to be rugged and low-flying for CAS to troops who need rapid air-to-ground attack when helicopters couldn't respond fast enough.

It sure is one hell of a tank buster, though. My neighbors daughter flew one in the first Iraq War and there were books with an A-10 having an entire rudder and engine shot off and still able to fly back home.

The f35 is a piece of junk that has been designed as a jack of all trades master of none and is outclassed by CURRENT Russian aircraft let alone future Russian fighters

I see you're from the UK, what are you basing your info on?

Curious how you'd have responded if he was from the US? Do you think they have a blockade on airplane information over there?

Brought to you by the same good people that made Chernobyl possible.

It's a big stupid piece of junk, is what it is. It's become more expensive than the F-22 to produce (which is the exact opposite of what was promised), the DoD wants it to replace the...

F-16
F/A-18
A-10

F*CK THAT. Fighters have roles for reasons! You can't just make a fighter that does every job.

ESPECIALLY WHEN IT CAN'T EVEN LAND ON A CARRIER.

Let me tell you a thing. My country doesn't have great health care provided by the Govt., our troops need new gear tenfold, and our infrastructure in general is suffering.

Meanwhile, the DoD and White House have been chasing an impossible chitty-chitty-bang-bang.

This miserable fightercraft is the embodiment of everything wrong with my country.

The F-22 is a perfectly capable strike plane, complete with internal bays to allow the maintenance of Stealth while carrying ordnance. As an air superiority platform it is so powerful it might as well be a UFO. The reason the F-35 is getting the nod is because the Navy drives much (the majority?) of tactical air doctrine in the US military, and the F-22 is an Air Force only platform. The F-22 is absolutely amazing, but its airframe is incapable of being adapted to carrier operations, so the Navy (and thus the Marine Corps) drove very, very hard for an "F-22" of their own. The costs for development were so high, however, that it could only be justified by putting together an aircraft that could operate for all 3 services (the Army is prohibited from operating fixed wing attack aircraft, which is why the stupidly bad attack helicopter programs are still in operation).

What the F-35 is supposed to be, on paper, is the best of the F-22 integrated into a multi-role platform that can be modified easily to operate from land and sea. The cancellation of the A-10 is yet another round in the Air Forces attempts to get rid of close air support as a legitimate role (as opposed to more conventional strike missions), something it has tried to do repeatedly since the end of the Army Air Corps due to the prevailing opinion in the USAF that Air Power is better used elsewhere and close support should be performed by artillery.

What the F-35 is likely to be is another AH-64 Apache. Something designed to do one thing, then expanded to do dozens of other things, to the point where it really does nothing at all. Time will tell, but the reason you don't generally want a "one size fits all" aircraft is because many missions are mutually exclusive. For example, an interceptor needs very high speed but a close air support platform needs very low speeds.

I am not optimistic, but hey. It's the US Government and they are spending money, what could possibly go wrong?

The US Military's heads are certifiably retarded.

What amazes me is the antipathy towards the F-22. Strangely, one of the primary reasons the F-22 is so expensive is that it is SO incredibly powerful that exports of the thing have been banned, making it very hard to have an economy of scale to reduce its cost.

The thing is stealthier than a B-2, with a radar signature smaller than a dime (10 cent piece) thrown in the air. It has baffles to reduce turbulence (making it faster, more fuel efficient, and harder to locate with doppler or other air sensing technologies), IR and thermal baffles, can take off from a short runway go straight up and break the sound barrier before hitting its ceiling without using afterburners, fly backwards, fight itself if the pilot is unconscious, has the most powerful radar on an air platform that it doesn't need to switch on because it can use the reflected energy from ANY radio/radar/IR/Thermal source in the airspace to locate targets, receive and give telemetry to any allied platform from submarines to satellites, and does all this with an enormous operational range.

If it were a Star Wars ship it would have 15s across the board, cloak, every maneuver on the dial (all of which would be green), and 10 of every upgrade slot.

But it sure is expensive. In X-Wing it would probably cost 100k points but be replaced by a Rookie for 50 points :-)

Probably poking the nest here, but might want to check your CQ facts on the F35. It can, and has landed on the Nimitz a couple of months ago...

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=STVAM85y3i0

.. Now back to Xwing!

It makes me mad thinking about the new supercarrier the UKs ordered, we had carriers with harrier jumpjets that worked just fine so what do we do? We retire what works for a carrier that's late and over budget that even when it does arrive won't have any bleedin fighters it can use.

It goes to show you newer isn't always better.

I cringe whenever the F-35 is mentioned as anything other than a waste of DoD spending and why the Air Force should be made to consult the Army when deciding on a new attack platform. The A-10 and AH-64 are saints in my book. Anytime they came on station, terry knew what was up and dipped out double quick with his tail tucked.

Only a mad man wants to get in front of the A10`s gun, it ain't a fast plane or that nimble but used correctly it's mean.

One of my favourite games as a kid was A-10 tank Hunter on the pc.

The f35 is a piece of junk that has been designed as a jack of all trades master of none and is outclassed by CURRENT Russian aircraft let alone future Russian fighters

I see you're from the UK, what are you basing your info on?

Curious how you'd have responded if he was from the US? Do you think they have a blockade on airplane information over there?

Has nothing to do with that. Why the hostility? I mean the UK is also procuring the f-35. Wondering what the public opinion was.

Calm down boy.

I hear they're also decommissioning A-10s in favor of F-35s and Q drones.

I think it's a foolish move. There's no better CAS fighter than an A-10.

Very true. When it comes to close air support, the uglier, the better. Look at the old A-6 Intruder, ugly as sin, but boy could it save a soldier's life in Vietnam and the first Gulf War.