We can't make the decision based too heavily on trying to just minimize peace time flying hour cost or so. They're being bought to fight in a war against the Russian Air Force We're not planning to fight a third world country equipped with older export versions of Russian or even Soviet equipment. We're preparing for a near future conflict with the full might of the Russian Federation directly. That means Su-57's, Su-35S's, Mig-35's, etc. flown by Russia's best pilots, using Russia's best missiles such as R-77 and R-37 and all of their best SAM systems in unlimited capacity, supported in full by their most powerful ground based radar stations. The F-18E/F offered are Block III. The Super Hornet with Growlers seems like it has a decent survivability against the Russian squadrons - each flight would be accompanied by a dedicated Growler and multiple Growlers can be present simultaneously in the air, reducing the range from which their friendly aircraft can be detected and locked. Unfortunately the Growlers in the offer don't include the offensive EW capabitilities, only the defensive ones. These or the F-35A would all offer a real challenge for the Russian Air Force pilots, something to think about. On the other hand just having ~60 of some economy class "hey we saved some money" fighters means that just facing the Su-57 they will already be outnumbered - nevermind the rest of the fighters. And how well would something like a couple squadrons of Gripens supported by two AWACS fare against a larger number of Su-57's supported by ~4,100 other aircraft? Like the FAF generals say - it's not enough to have a fighter. We need a fighter with superior edge. They also pointed that the runway requirements of the F-35A are not really an issue. We have lots and lots of long tracks of road from early on designed to offer temporary air bases and many of them are long enough. And even then if you're fighting a third week of air war and your problem is that you're running short on available runways - that's a positive problem. The negative problem is that you lose your entire air force during the first week, possibly few first days of fighting. Remember, there will be GRU and KGB infiltrator teams trying to take out actual aircraft on the ground, trying to assault and sabotage air bases and the assassin squads will go directly after pilots, radar operators, officers and so on and the more conventional military special forces won't sit on their hands either. And then there are those 4,100+ aircraft, supported by all the permanent early warning radar sites and other facilities, SAM systems and so on. We really need every edge we can get and we're not getting an edge through the economical strategy of winning through attrition and cost efficiency. -+20% quantities don't have any impact at our size. Economics and attrition is the 'long war' approach. Our most pressing concern is to survive the initial shock of the punishing first few days and not to collapse entirely in two weeks - and if it comes to it inflict as much pain as humanely possible while going down fighting.
https://www.tuni.fi/fi/ajankohtaist...t-eurooppalaisen-puolustusinnovaatiokilpailun Tampere University's team of researchers led by Taneli Riihonen have won a European '2020 Defense Innovation Prize' competition with their anti-drone and anti-swarm innovation of using full-duplex radio technology against drones. Thus far a limiting factor to jamming drones has been the requirement to discover the used bandwidth and signals and then secondly to jam that bandwidth and the signals. However usually the jamming itself interferes with the ability to detect signals - since the jamming emitter is within immediate proximity and interfering with reception. The team devised a solution that by using full-duplex radio technology they can eliminate the interference caused by one's own jamming equipment upon one's own receivers and thus allowing both active scanning for the control signals and the targeted jamming. They are now going to move ahead to deploy this new technology as available products for European defense industries in the form of an integrated actively scanning drone swarm jammer system that is "superior to any current jammers and anti-drone equipment".
Finland requested Best and Final Offer for the HX program. Deadline is april 30. Finland won't decide which plane to go with till later in the year.
Yes, it's kind of an impasse at the moment, the generals - strategists and tacticians who are former pilots themselves and who follow all modern conflicts and spend their careers thinking about this stuff - seem to really want the F-35A but the overall offer isn't one that they can get passed so they're trying to see if there is such will on the side of the seller that the buyer's generals can get the deal passed numerically. Thankfully it appears that the political leadership has given the generals full confidence and liberty to evaluate the deal without further political pressure besides having a set price cap for the whole thing.
Probably doesn't help that the logistics for it are a mess. I think right now there is an engine shortage. Supposedly 5% of the F-35 fleet won't have engines within a year (by 2022). It's not a manufacturing shortage. It's a maintenance one. Could be up to 20% affected. I'm betting the engine will need a rework (for new engines). But I don't know if that would affect Finland if they don't need/want the planes till 2030. It might not affect Finland at all since it is mostly a maintenance issue. One I think they already solved and brand new engines don't have the degrading issue. https://www.defensenews.com/air/202...he-newest-problem-to-hit-the-f-35-enterprise/ https://www.dailysabah.com/business...ne-shortage-forces-us-to-limit-f-35-air-shows
Want to talk about maintenance mess just look at the flight hours per ground maintenance ratios of Russian fighters. It's always advantageous to buy a fighter 10+ years after it's introduction because with every fighter you're going to be running into all the gremlins that need to be ironed out. 20+ years is even better but also at that point you'll be soon flying against freshly introduced fighters that could be 20 years ahead in design but also occasionally suffer from some toothing problems. I think one of the difficulties these days is how the media and social media function in that they don't see the big picture and make a big deal of some 'another day at the office' issues based on whatever their prejudices are already and they happen to come across that day. Buy French, buy Swedish, buy American, buy Russian - whatever you buy you'll get your fair share or more of problems and budget overruns and under deliverance etc. I mean sure every such occasion affects the plane and it's users but generally everyone is affected in turn. For example there was a big fuss about the Russian use of thrust vector control and how it was missing from some fighters being introduced later but it turned out that while you get an advantage somewhere you also add to the weight, complexity and cost of the engine and the fighter itself and that complexity and cost shows up in maintenance - increased need of maintenance, shorter lifespan for components and so. The F-35 team said they didn't want it added because they already felt the fighters were going to be challenged by complexity. Also you're really not supposed to be doing very low speed aerobatics anyway in modern air war because you're a sitting duck no matter how much your acrobatics is enhanced at lowest speeds - those short range IR missiles are always going to be even faster and some of the latest are quite resistant to flares. -------- The HX procurement program aims for deliveries to be in 2025-2030.
it's also not an air superiority fighter but it was never intended to be. But they keep finding issues even though the F-35 is technically already 14 years old. first flight was in 2006. For any other nation that is only going to use 1 version of it it will (probably) be a great plane. For the United states it is a terrible plane. I know the Navy hates because it only has 1 engine. That and none of the carriers can even support it not even the new Ford's. The logistics plane the navy uses can't carry the F-35 engines. I don't know if it is a weight thing or a size thing. So they will have to use the Osprey planes " Yes, the F-35C can take off and land on the carriers but the ships lack the communications, data integration, and maintenance facilities to fully utilize the supposed capabilities of the F-35 – those much hyped surveillance capabilities.Without the proper comms and data handling facilities on the carriers, the F-35 can collect data but can’t effectively relay it to the carrier and allow the carrier to make use of it. On a related and stunning note, the US Navy has almost no ability to transfer F-35 engines to carriers.The Ford is the only carrier that has the equipment to receive an engine.The MV-22 has demonstrated the ability to transport a single engine to a carrier but this can only be done over very short distances. As far as the amphibious ships, none can land the F-35B due to its excessive exhaust heat which damages the flight deck unless it has been specially modified.You’ll recall that even the new USS America was unable to operate the F-35B, as the ship was built.It had to be modified with special deck heat treatments, thermal and structural modifications to compartments immediately beneath the flight deck, and relocation of equipment in the path of the F-35B’s downward landing exhaust in addition to numerous communications and data handling facility installations and modifications.Yes, America, the ship that was purpose built for the F-35B was unable to operate the F-35B without extensive and expensive modifications. In fact, of 11 carriers and 33 amphibious ships, currently only 4 amphibious ships can fully operate the F-35.(1)The lucky four are listed below. USS Essex USS Makin Island USS America USS Wasp Even with the modifications, the F-35B can only land on a couple of limited spots.For the America, the F-35B can only land on spots 7 and 9.(2) It is worth noting that none of the supercarriers can operate the F-35. The USS Bonhomme Richard, LHD-6, which recently suffered a massive fire that burned out of control for several days, would have been the fifth ship altered to operate the F-35.The Bonhomme Richard is now, officially, being scrapped. So, for those of you who envision air armadas of Navy F-35s sweeping the skies clear of enemy aircraft, that vision is still a long way in the future because we only have four amphibious ships that can even operate the F-35! It is worth noting that the modifications required to operate the F-35 require many months and hundreds of millions of dollars to install (I assume the F-35 proponents are dutifully adding that to the cost of the F-35?).It is not a capability that can be quickly installed when needed.It will take decades to bring the current ships up to the standard required to handle the F-35.If a war were to start today, we’d be limited to four amphibious ships operating our F-35s. What is all this telling us?What lessons are being demonstrated (and ignored!)? In our pursuit of technology, we created an aircraft too complex to even communicate with our carriers. Concurrency kills. Even the modified ships have only a limited F-35 operating capability and, in the event of battle damage, we might lack the ability to operate the aircraft due to damage to the couple of specific landing spots. In pursuit of the big, expensive, flashy toys, we’re ignoring the mundane support and infrastructure needed to even fully operate the toys. Just a reminder … When the F-35C reaches squadron service, the Navy is planning to reduce the squadron size from the current 12 aircraft to 10, further shrinking the already shrunken air wings.The F-35 is the gift that keeps on giving!" Now this is not a problem for Finland (or any country that is just going to use only the A variant). But for the U.S using the C variant (I think only the U.S. is going to use the navy version) and anyone who is going to use the B (vtol) variant it is. So Italy, South Korea, Singapore, And the UK will have the B variant. Some of is all the backlog development of the F-35 that the navy didn't want to hold the Ford back. And the navy is working on a 6th generation aircraft that will probably mostly replace the F-35. Maybe not completely because supposedly it won't be as stealthy for range and weapons payload reasons. It's also not a budget overrun. It is THE budget overrun. It's already at least double what it was originally estimated to cost. By the end of the supposed 50 lifespan of the program (not the jets themselves) it is estimated to be 7-8 times the original estimated cost (of $200 billion. It is now estimated to be 1.7 trillion when the program ends. that's development to production). For any country buying the F-35 especially any that were not involved in the development part of it, it is probably an amazing deal. As the major financer for it for the U.S. it is a shitty deal. Slightly less shitty for countries that didn't sink as much money into it as the U.S.
Financially yes, logistically yes. Then again most other countries can't even afford to dream of having those issues as they are lagging so far behind.
Funny how 2 of partner countries in the F-35 program are working on a 6th gen fighter. Of course the U.S. is designing 2 separate ones for the air force and navy (I think some joint work on systems, capabilities and engine but not the airframe). And I think the goal for 6th generation is to be flying (maybe not production) by 2030. Russia is working on a 6th gen. but will they actually be able to field any.
Their 5th gen doesn't even have proper stealth and the vector thrust engine mainly adds benefits to dogfight and low airspeed fighting at the cost of higher cost, maintenance cost, longer downtime and being worn out faster. And even with the stealth mainly being left out it is still too expensive for them to field in significant numbers. So yea not expecting them to be able to field that many 6th gen fighters and whenever they come up with their own. Yet for tiny countries in their neighborhood even those small amounts of advanced fighters pose significant threat.
Can Russia even field their 5th generation planes? I thought they were having trouble across all of their military. I don't know about the Mig-41 but the SU-57 is sounds more like a 4.7 generation than an actual 5th generation aircraft.
Su-57 Number built: 12, 10 test units and 2 serial production units. A threat to take into account for someone who only has 60 fighters himself but doesn't really deserve the 'in active service' notation as the whole fleet consists of prototypes. "A total of ten flying and three non-flying prototypes were built for flight tests and initial combat trials.[80] Five flying and two non-flying prototypes comprise the "first stage" aircraft design, with the two non-flying prototypes testing static flight loads and avionics integration." The initial prototypes didn't even pass structural integrity tests for the airframe itself and had to be ad hoc patched up with supports and it wasn't until the sixth prototype that they got the structural integrity to where they wanted it to be. No one has it easy these days with modern hitech engineering projects.
I did see something about no one is expecting it to be exported anymore (or at least anytime soon) and India backed out of buying some. Most of the export seems to deal with it not expecting the 2nd generation engine till the late 2020s. And till then all production models will be stuck with faulty 1st gen engines. And something about Russia being behind on engine technology compared to pretty much everyone else.
The U.S. is doing trials on the Italian carrier to probe that the F-35B can operate from a ski-jump. Italian carrier is in the states at the moment for F-35 stuff. Their own fighters are training somewhere else in the states. And mostly unrelated but India is building a new indigenous carrier that will be about the size of the Queen Elizabeth class England has but CATOBAR. also China has ridiculous names for their navy. It's PLAN (People's Liberation Army Navy) or the airgroup of the navy is PLANAF. Yep it's People's Liberation Army Navy Air Force.
The plane itself is fine from an operational view. But a complete failure from the goal of the program.
