There are going to be some disappointed aeronautical fans this weekend at the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, UK. The F-35B Lightning II fighter will not be making its scheduled international public début due to the grounding of the entire F-35 fleet after a runway incident at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida on June 23.
The Short TakeOff/Vertical Landing (STOVL) F-35B was meant to make its first public appearances this month at the Royal International Air Tattoo and the Farnborough International Airshow, but the ongoing investigation into a runway fire and subsequent fleet grounding meant that the aircraft was unable to gain clearance for the transatlantic flight. The exact cause of the fire has yet to be determined.
"The safety of pilots and aircraft has to be our priority,” says an MOD spokesman. “Of course, it is disappointing that the Lightning II has not arrived in the UK in time for the Air Tattoo but we fully support the decision not to grant clearance for the aircraft to make their first transatlantic flight to the UK until the technical investigations following an engine failure are complete."
An international development effort led by Lockheed Martin, the F-35 is the single most expensive weapons program in history with an estimated cost of over US$1 trillion dollars. The recent fire is the latest difficulty for the controversial program, which has been plagued by cost overruns, technical problems, and major redesign issues.
Source: The Royal International Air Tattoo
Seriously though, isn't there something wrong when that kind of funding is allocated to designing destructive weaponry, but trying to understand some basic science that might address, for example, ocean de-alkalinisation, is met with budget cuts and apathy. Fear rules.
The Brits have just had the naming ceremony of a massive aircraft carrier designed to operate these aircraft. It is already going to have to have it deploy helicopters instead due to delays with the F35; delays which I assume have just been extended thanks to the fire and subsequent grounding.
It is not as though having large capital ships to operate such aircraft off makes a lot of sense anyway now that supersonic cruise missiles are being deployed, not to mention atomic depth-charges, which I assume have a an anti ship mine equivalent. The latter two feasibly deployed by terrorists in the form of IEDs once they get their hands on battlefield nuclear weapons. Pop one of those off in the Western approaches to the English Channel and the results would be spectacular in the extreme, especially considering the amplification from the funnel shape of the topography. (Imagine a 65,000 tonnes displacement aircraft carrier one minute happily moored at its home port and the next minute beached in the middle of the town, along with a number of other ships. As I said: "spectacular".)
Another quote worth remembering and closely related to your first sentence is Bob Dylan's: 'money doesn't talk, it swears' - from It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding).
Keep that under your hat.
In the Piper Cub Paradox, you pit a fighter aircraft with all possible stores (guns, rockets, etc) against a Piper Cub (which can carry exactly one AAM and the associated electronics. You take the cost of the one fighter (around $300 million a copy and around $50 million a year for fully booked costs.) And compare it to the number of Piper Cubs that you can manufacture at $8,000 a copy and around $50k a year fully booked costs. In any sort of simulation the Piper Cubs will always win because of sheer numbers.
This might not seem germane, but both the Russians and Chinese are set up to neutralize high-tech fighters such as the F-35 with swarms of MiG-15's, 17's and 21's, with an increasing number being remotely controlled drones. This is the Piper Cub Paradox in the real world.
Let me suggest that we need more development and testing standards to assure a finished product and lower cost.