Genuinely Bad News About the F-35 and the A-10

[IDemo]

First, the background. Two military airplanes are getting a lot of attention: the A-10 "Warthog"—"Honey Badger" would be a better name—a kind of flying tank that has been crucial in "close air support" missions from the first Gulf War onwards; and the F-35 "Lightning II," a still-in-development multi-purpose airplane that has been plagued by technical problems, production delays, and cost overruns.

As my "Tragedy of the American Military" article argues, the two airplanes don't have a necessary logical connection, since they're meant for different roles. But they have a close political and budgetary link, because first the George W. Bush and now the Obama administration have been trying to phase out the (battle-proven, reliable, relatively cheap) Warthog in part to pay for the (opposite of all those things) Lightning II.

Now the developments, which are genuinely bad.

1) "F-35 Massages Flight Test Results," which is the title of a new article by Giovanni de Briganti in Defense-Aerospace.com. The article in turn draws from a report by the Pentagon's Director of Operational Test and Evaluation documenting on the mounting technical and financial problems for the project.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/01/genuinely-bad-news-about-the-f-35-and-the-a-10/384721/

[Wellstone ruled]

1. And to think the F-35

does not have computer software to operate it's guns for at least 5 years.

[bemildred]

2. This has a lot to do with why we lose our wars.

All these high-tech magical weapons turn out to not be up to the job in wars of attrition, we won WWII with quantity, not quality, although our quality was plenty good back then too.

[Blue_Tires]

3. FWIW, the military has a long history of phasing out the old (but cheap and reliable)

for taking a longshot on next-gen vaporware technology...

[Brother Buzz]

4. The Army should go back into the fixed wing business and glom onto all those Air Force A10's

Hell, the KISS Warthog is so simple and bulletproof, even an Army mechanic can keep their bestest 'friend in the sky' flying