Now That’s a Tailhook Scandal
But where will it land?
The Royal Navy’s multi-billion pound fighter plane programme is under threat amid claims that its new all-purpose jets cannot land on aircraft carriers, it has emerged.
Leaked Pentagon documents claim a design flaw in the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) has caused eight simulated landings to fail.
The “F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Concurrency Quick Look Review” claimed the flaw meant that the “arrestor” hook, used to stop the plane during landing, was too close to the plane’s wheels.
Time was, the F-35 was nicknamed the “Joint Strike Fighter,” because it would be the new all-purpose fighter for the Air Force, the Navy, and the Marines. Being unable to make carrier landings would make it slightly less Joint.
Of course, the Navy is looking at a RIF of a carrier task force or two, going from 11 flattops to ten or maybe just nine. But it won’t matter if they don’t have planes to put on them.
My own thinking? Rethink the carrier. More drones, smaller crews, shorter decks — and pump some of the savings into avoiding another RIF.
The 1,000-foot carrier might have its best days behind it. They also provide great big targets — which we can’t afford to lose even one of. More numerous, smaller, cheaper ships with fewer officers and men make losses bearable. And budgets, too.
I think the F-35 and the F-22 represent the last of the manned fighters. Ive been saying for awhile that once they figure out how to carry bombs on the Global Hawk that the manned aircraft world is forever changed.
Enter this:
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-12-31/news/30575726_1_mq-9-new-drone-uav
The General Atomics Avenger Drone. Yes, size does matter. It doesn’t carry a few hellfire missiles, it carries a very large bomb and a wide variety of other ordinance and reconnisance packages.
Now I ask you, would you rather have 10 Avengers or one F-35? Would you rather have 10 F-15 Super Eagles or one F-22? I would also ask which of the two will have more operational hours in a given month, but that would be mean.
Don’t you think the Avenger would look really nice with a set of folding wings, you know, so that it could be carrier based?
Yeah, I do too.
In a real world encounter it’s highly likely one F-22 would kill all ten F-15’s. It’s really that good.
“Now I ask you, would you rather have 10 Avengers or one F-35?”
One F-35, hands down. The Avenger cannot survive for a minute in anything but a zero-threat air environment; it has no maneuverability and is RP’d at the end of a 1.6-second data transmission time. An old Me-262 could eat them alive, much less a modern fighter or SAM.
I suspect the drone mentality will come back to bite us in a rather large way. Drones are very useful things, but they’re not a replacement for a brain in a cockpit in many roles.
Any Dod acquisition program valued more than $1M is entirely political, even if they occasionally end up doing the right thing, quite by accident.
Doesn’t anyone remember the F-111?
Nonsense. Aeroplanes will never be able to sink a battleship.
Number One Son and I were discussing this one a couple of days ago. IMHO, the JSF is a boondoggle: we cannot bring them info service in volume in less than 3 years, and probably less than 5. Within 5 years, we will have drones in place that can do 9/10 of their functions at the 1/10 of the cost or less. (Engineer the next generation of the Tomahawk so that it can be remotely fine-tuned during delivery, and most of the other 1/10th goes away.) The F22 platform can be extended indefinitely for point-defense and defense of homeland purposes that drones aren’t good at.
“Within 5 years, we will have drones in place that can do 9/10 of their functions”
Rot.
Right now drones simply cannot replace manned fighters. Someday they will, but not today. I think a more cost-effective option to designing an entirely new airframe would be to redesign the tail hook.
We’ve already spent the money on the super carriers, so changing the fleet paradigm isn’t going to save us any money. A better option would be to stop trying to balance the budget on the back of an essential government service and instead look to the trillions of dollars we’re sending to the nation’s geriatric wards.
I think you overestimate the vulnerability of a Nimitz-class carrier. A lucky shot with an ASM, or a saturation attack with hundreds of them, may knock a carrier out of action for a time, but we wouldn’t lose it. It cold even withstand a handful of torpedoes.
I’m in favor of reducing social programs. I’m in favor of reducing the huge number of immigrants pouring into our country. There’s two areas which can show savings.
I’m in favor of building up the Navy’s fleet. I’m in favor of re-starting the assembly line for the Air Force’s F-22. We don’t need a thousand of them but it may be prudent to produce another one hundred on top of the 170 or so we currently have.
The F-35 is not the same type of aircraft as the F-22. The F-35 is a ground attack aircraft; the F-22 is an air superiority fighter.
Greed is destroying our defense capabilities more than any liberal’s RIF plans.The carriers, nuclear subs, and jets we are building are no more useful than the Maginot Line but cost a lot more. The Osprey V22 is the most glaring example. A young boy with a paint gun can stop it from landing.It is virtually useless as even the simplest tests demonstrate. No matter if it can’t perform it’s mission just change the mission. Liberals love the spending and the GOP loves defense contractors.1.8 trillion now for 2011 deficit plus 1.2 ttrillion fed magic money–biggest borrowing in history for 2012. GOP Congress gave Obama endless cascade of debt to carry whom to re-election.Obama made a deal with rich old GOP guys in house no questions asked spending on all their pet pyramids and he gets all he wants to spending on his pyramids.Carriers are not made despite their expense,but because of it.The Osprey MV-22 is made because it is the most expensive way to perform it’s mission.Jobs come first.
Wow. That has to be the most uninformed rant about the V-22 I’ve ever seen.
FYI, the Marines who have been using the Osprey in combat seem quite happy with it.
Concur Casey. Latest I’ve heard re: the Osprey is that operationally the Marines love it. It’s faster, flies father and higher and is more maneuverable that the Chinook (talk about an easy target). Down side, it is more expensive to operate. And w/ looming budget cuts…
As for the tail-hook, pretty much every plane the DoD has purchased has been accused of being a dog (F-18, Harrier, B-1, B-2, F-14) that in the end have turned out to be pretty good planes. It’s the bureaucracy, graft and corruption have grown exponentially.
Don’t even get me started on the carriers. I tend to agree w/ Steve that smaller and more carriers (look at what the Indians are doing w/ the Gorshkov) may be the way too go. Except, I seriously doubt we’d get 20 40k ton ships in exchange for 9 Nimitz/Fords. So I gotta go w/ the big decks in that argument.
“Except, I seriously doubt we’d get 20 40k ton ships in exchange for 9 Nimitz/Fords.”
That.
The reason we use big carriers is because both carrier operations and carrier defense scale well. By the time you put together the systems required to make the small ships defensible, you’re back to wanting a big ship. Drones don’t change this. When drones are able to replace manned aircraft (to whatever extent that is feasible), the drones will be almost as big as our current aircraft and the logic of big carriers remains. Until we figure out how to economically launch large volumes of sorties from submarines, the big carrier (along with the amphibious task force) is the centerpiece for force-projection.
Stephen, your linked article cites a study mentioned by the Telegraph, but not named. The only such study I can find was released by POGO, which depends on leaks and “whistle-blowers” for its work.
I can’t find any primary sources for the “”F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Concurrency Quick Look Review” which has been repeatedly mentioned as the source for the POGO (and now other) reports. Given the breathless nature of the reporting, including predictions that the entire program may be canceled, I would take all of this with a very large grain of salt. Recall most media depend on scandal to improve ratings/sales, so they’ll go nuts over something like this.
Also please recall thirty years ago when the M-1 Abrams and the M-2 Bradley enjoyed similar coverage as gold-plated wastes of money, with the Bradley being tagged as a “deathtrap” in the bargain.
Carrier-qualification problems during the development of a new aircraft type! Who ever heard of such a thing at any point in aviation history?
What does it matter anyway ?
F22s or F35 won’t make any difference given that the real danger is not some imaginary enemy from abroad but the place itself going to hell in a handbasket.
You can’t make something out of nothing …. the way things are going , sooner or later , US marines in Okinawa will end up just like Red Army soldiers, selling their hardware on their way home …
Sounds like the F-111 redux. Oh well, we never learn.
Two points: first, studies have repeatedly shown that to get a given level of capability, big carriers are actually *cheaper* than small carriers. A Nimitz class CVN has an air group more than twice as big as a carrier half the size. Second, although drones have a lot going for them, they have a major problem that doesn’t get talked about very much, which is that the US military has nowhere near enough communications bandwidth to support large-scale use of long-range drones.
According to the encyclopedia of USAF Aircraft and Missiles: Volume I (Post WW-II Fighters), USAF thought of ending the Phantom-II program with the F-4D because of development problems with the F-4E. The book was published by the Office of Air Force History.
Gulled by sensationalism. The F-35 tailhook has a bounce-frequency issue, which needs correcting. It’s not that big a deal- this sort of issue is WHY WE TEST PLANES.
As to the drone thing- you’ve been reading too much sci-fi. Drones today can do some things, but it will take generations of AI development before a competent automated fighter drone can be deployed (no, RPVs are out of the question).
Nor is their any practical alternative today to the big-deck carrier: for an aircraft to have a meaningful payload and range it weighs X – which in turn means being launched from a long deck by catapult.
Here’s some sense from knowledgable people: http://warships1discussionboards.yuku.com/topic/19067/U-S-Navy-And-U-K-Royal-Navy-F-35-Unable-To-Get-Aboard-Ship#.TxoWHZfjuSo
These problems with the JSF have been known for quite some time, as readers of Aviation Week and Strategypage know. The JSF is indeed the F-111 redux, but the desire of both the Repugs and the Dimmis is to keep those contributions coming, no matter the cost in both dollars and lives.
As to the carriers, I know that I am beating a dead horse, but frankly, the carriers will last only about 30 minutes if the fit hits the shan, thanks to modern subs and missiles. But losing a few carriers might be worth the cost if the public outrage forces an end to the American Empire, as Pat Buchanan and other genuine conservatives have been advocating for a long time.
Having worked for many years as a contract worker in the defense field, and seen first hand the corruption, I am at the point where I root for America’s enemies if that is what it takes to bring this country back to what Washington said: No entangling alliances.
That is why both my wife and I will be voting for Ron Paul in less than 45 minutes.
You sound like 18 yr old, who are the majority of Paulbots. Foolish, naive, laughingly idealistic. Really Paul is very similar to Kucinish, in this weak, meek, America hating bullcrap. Rooting for the USA’s enemies? Do us a favor, please relinquish your citizenship and leave the country, ASAP, you and your wife.
The Joint strike Fighter is… out of Joint?
As for smaller CV’s, well, the studies have been done. CV’s are far more efficient and deadly, and much, much, much harder to kill. The survival rate for CVL’s is truly bad. CV’s are Weebles. They will get hit, but won’t go down.
Mission-wise, it takes about 4 CVL’s to do the job of 1 CV, and the crew losses would be enormous. We would lose our cadre of trained seamen with CVL’s, because of their vulnerability and also because they sink so rapidly (No time for evac). There would be no coming back from that.
We rule the seas because of our CV’s. All the rest is theoretical nonsense. No one wants to test our Navy, because we could whup the entire rest of the world combined at sea.
The real danger to a CV is from land-based air. With land-based air in support, they will be just fine. They make irresistible targets to an enemy, one which would cost them dearly as they futilely try to destroy them.
CV’s are simply money well-spent. The planes will be just fine. They’ll work out the bugs, in due time. R&D is always expensive and a bit chancy. It is always worth it, in the end.