This thing is in service, so conventional wisdom about how long it takes to do stuff before that is irrelevant. From the introduction of my original link:
Despite more than 20 years and approximately $62.5 billion spent so far on research and development alone, program officials still haven’t been able to deliver an aircraft that can fly as often as needed or to demonstrate its ability to perform in combat, which places military personnel in jeopardy.
I would have said the "R&D decade" was the 1990s since JAST began in 1993 and developmental contracts were awarded in 1996, but POGO are conservative in their judgments.
Your first comment was about suspended development, implying you think the system should be part of a continuous R&D cycle. Yet this comment implies you think the system should be outside of development. It's hard to tell what you're criticizing when your points are inconsistent.
I question some of the critiques in your link. For example, they claim the JSFs 61% availability rates are far below the standard of 75-80%. But if you look at published numbers, none of the legacy aircraft F15/F16/F18 variants (which have had decades to work out reliability issues) are above a 60% availability.[1]
What, specifically, are you critical of in terms of the JSF capability? Is that criticism due to what you perceived as mismanaged development or mismanaged priorities (e.g., the tradeoffs of a single platform)? And what is the base rate for comparison?
I don't agree that any of my statements have had any of those implications. USA citizens have the right to complain about any expensive government program. F35 is a $1.7T program, which qualifies as expensive. It's perfectly ordinary to see administrators of non-military programs called before Congress and raked over the coals for spending that seems excessive to some legislator playing to the basest instincts of voters. We recently decided, somehow, that a few billion dollars was too much of a tax credit to justify keeping millions of American children out of poverty. [0] We never see any elected politician complaining about military spending, however.
It's a commonplace that we spend more on the military than the next ten nations put together, most of whom are our allies. That obscures the more amazing fact that over a third of the military spending in the world is spent by USA. Obviously the Pentagon budget should be halved if not quartered, as we were promised before the Saudis dropped the WTC. In such a context, there would be no room for a plane that offers the prospect of more expense instead of more capability. Northrop lobbyists and their employees at think tanks and in the media might be able to dry-lab some "rates" and "figures" to distract from the obvious state of the F35 program. The scale of the disaster cannot be hidden from unbiased investigators. Even if it never makes the evening war media news, those who care to know can consult experts like POGO.
However, if you insist on a criticism in the proper jargon, F35 will never, ever, regardless of how much is spent, be as capable at close air support as the vastly less expensive A10 "Warthog". You can ask any American serviceman who has served on the ground in the last two decades. This isn't the only important role for a military aircraft, but it is an important role.
> We never see any elected politician complaining about military spending, however.
You see it happen all the time. That's part of the broken incentive structure that led to the F35 in the first place. Politicians cancelled or curtailed the B-1, B-2, F-22, A-12, and V-22 just to name a handful off the top of my head. The B-1 and V-22 got uncancelled, and the B-2 and F-22 programs produced significantly fewer aircraft than they originally intended to (thus making these programs more expensive on a per-unit basis since the R&D couldn't be amortized effectively).
Therefore the F35 was intended to fit the requirements of three separate services (protecting it from interservice rivalry and more broadly amortizing the R&D expense) as well as exported to several allies (in order to further amortize R&D and make it safer politically). If there was the political capital necessary for a Harrier successor to be funded on its own, it wouldn't have been rolled into the F35.
> However, if you insist on a criticism in the proper jargon, F35 will never, ever, regardless of how much is spent, be as capable at close air support as the vastly less expensive A10 "Warthog".
This is not actually true. The A-10 is a death trap that is notorious for creating friendly fire casualties. The machine gun isn't effective against armored vehicles, and if you fly the plane low enough to use the machine gun, you're basically committing suicide against modern anti-aircraft weapons. Other than that, it's basically a missile truck, which lots of other planes can do with better accuracy and survivability. Even Ukraine doesn't want it.
I agree with much of what you say. The citizenry have every right to criticize and lobby for their tax dollars to be spent differently. But it appears you've already come to the conclusion that the JSF isn't worthwhile. Put differently, what would the JSF need to show capability-wise in order to change your mind?
I would like to see us spend less in the military if it goes to better use instead. Particularly when commanders are advocating getting rid of programs and Congress keeps them anyway. The US is effectively subsidizing NATOs military capability and mitigating the blowback requires more thoughtful analysis than just slashing the budget. I'm not convinced yet that POGO are the experts worth listening to because they seem a bit out of touch (see my last comment about what they claim the availability should be vs. the parity that matters).
As one of those service members who was supported by the A10 overseas, you're right. Grunts on the ground love the sound of that cannon overhead when close air support is needed. But you are comparing the one very specialized thing the A10 was designed to do. I don’t think it’s a slight to a decathlete to point out there’s faster, specialized sprinters at the Olympics. Stray in any direction away from that and it loses the comparison miserably. Compare avionics, speed, maneuverability and munitions capability etc. (really, anything outside of the cannon) and the JSF is just far superior. In other words, if I was only allowed to have one plane in theater, it wouldn't be the A10.
...what would the JSF need to show capability-wise in order to change your mind?
My objections are not limited to the plane's capabilities. No capabilities would justify especially egregious costs. A sure-to-be-revised-upward $1.7T is probably egregious enough. Similar criticism applies to the military overall.
...if I was only allowed to have one plane in theater...
This seems an unrealistic limitation. Very few aircraft (or ground craft) can protect themselves from all threats. Perhaps the B2 can, because at night it's apparently invisible? Certainly the Warthog is vulnerable to many fighter jets. (Although in several recent wars, fighter jets have not been a threat?) I assume that even the best 4G fighters are vulnerable to the latest AA weapons. However, I think you have helped me answer your first question. At this time it's clear that no command staff would contemplate operating in a particular "theater" with only F35s as combat aircraft. We would have to consider F35s as capable in some sense, if any forward airbase or carrier group would host them without also hosting F15s, F16s, F18s, F22s, etc. That will never happen, but if it does many people will have to eat crow.
...spend less in the military if it goes to better use instead.
Here is our real disagreement. We should spend less, full stop. Nothing justifies a nation with 5% of the world's population spending 36% of the world's military expenditures. The fact that most of us believe there are such justifications indicates deeper problems. We are constantly gaslit by commercial news media, politicians, academics, movies, etc. that the world is very dangerous for us, that we should fear people who live far way, and that we should probably have special operators and deathdrones terrorizing them on a regular basis just to be safe. Most Americans haven't admitted to themselves that not only do we never enter a war for the reasons cited at the time, not only do we kill and impoverish far more innocent people than ever appear on the news, but having entered those wars we never win, and never accomplish any beneficial military objectives. That isn't to even mention the many wars we fight without admitting them, which of course have had worse results. That isn't to even mention the terrible boomerang effects that all our horrible stupid wars have had on our own society.
Everyone else in the world, who aren't constantly subject to the mixture of news and entertainment that never considers whether we should spend less money killing innocent humans, knows this secret that very few Americans can publicly admit. What drives this flood of misinformation? Adults only get one guess... money! USA cable news industry has almost $6B/year in revenue. USA military spending is over 100 times as much. Few are foolish enough to invoke "Hanlon's Razor" here. We all know that greater spending on political campaign "donations" is firmly in the interest of interested industries. Obviously hiring and editorial decisions in media, as well, can be influenced by advertising and access when resources are so far out of balance. On top of that, the three-week ratings bonanza whenever a new TV war starts are enough to make a network profitable for the whole year.
Start by remembering the unanimous push in the war media to get Saddam's WMDs. Then remember that ObL left Afghanistan entirely less than a month after we invaded. Recall that Qaddafi had outlawed both polygamy and slave markets, which have returned to Libya since his violent overthrow. If our military had fewer resources, it would menace the world less, and regular Americans would be safer.
It’s odd that you would find the same type of constraints, such as limiting the evaluation to the single dimension of close air support, to support your view while saying the same constraints are unreasonable in your next response.
I would like you to consider that we likely don’t disagree. I never said that money should be spent on the military or even by the government for that matter. The fact that was how you interpreted that comment before going on that long and apparently pre-chambered rant might be a good reason to give one some pause about your worldview.
I only offered CAS as a sop to the arcane MIC theology seen in this thread. All this prattle about per-unit basis, "Reformers", airframes, base rates, when the Pentagon can't even be audited. I don't particularly care about CAS; we shouldn't be there in the first place.
Either you agree, or you don't. If I can't figure it out, I can't care about it.
You brought up the A10 and the POGO's report to support your point. All my replies have literally been responses to the evidence you've provided for your position, so it's odd that you now think those points are irrelevant.
We probably have the same qualms with the MIC. I just don't think the evidence you use to support your claim is particularly valid, and tends to point towards ignorance on the subject. Combined with the circular logic presented and an inability to state what it would take to change your mind, it makes your position more dogmatic than rational. It’s not just a binary “we agree or don’t”, but the thought process that led it because that’s what will ultimately make me rethink my position. My issue isn't the conclusion, it's the way you came to it.
