What is the F-35B and Why is the UK Buying It?
http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2015/08/what-is-the-f-35b-and-why-is-the-uk-buying-it/
By
<http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/author/rich-wordsworth/>Rich
Wordsworth on 19 Aug 2015 at 12:30PM
http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?p=172046#172046
Over the past few years, the F-35 Lightning II –
the fifth-generation, Lockheed Martin
wunder-plane set to eventually take over from
almost every fighter jet in the US and UK
militaries – has received a public relations
kicking. It’s expensive – the total cost for the
programme so far is an incredible,
not-even-hyperbolic trillion dollars. It’s had
some embarrassing technical stumbles –
<http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2014/07/all-uk-and-us-f-35s-are-being-grounded-again-because-of-engine-fires/>engine
fires, a
<http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2015/01/the-trillion-dollar-f-35-wont-even-be-able-to-shoot-its-gun-until-2019/>non-functioning
cannonand
<http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2015/04/the-268000-f-35-pilot-helmet-can-see-through-the-pilots-aircraft/>a
half-million dollar helmet that fits comfortably
in the cockpit or on a pilot’s head
(<https://medium.com/war-is-boring/test-pilot-admits-the-f-35-can-t-dogfight-cdb9d11a875>but
reportedly not both). And while it’s designed as
a multirole, do-everything plane that will see
the West through the next three decades of air
combat, critics have been queuing up at the
online pulpit to explain why it’s not as capable
in each mission role as the plane it’s supposed
to be retiring. Though they’re usually
<http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2014/06/the-designer-of-the-f-16-explains-why-the-f-35-is-such-a-crappy-plane/>not
that politeabout it.
But despite the media bellyaching, the UK is
committed to purchasing an as-yet unknown number
of F-35s, primarily to fly off its
<http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2015/01/look-around-the-royal-navys-newest-aircraft-carrier/>two
new aircraft carriers. Committed to the tune of
<http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN06278>about
£5 billion (so far), which covers the first 14 UK
F-35s and their maintenance up to 2020 (but not
the larger bulk purchase expected in 2017, which
would bring the UK’s F-35 fleet up to the stated
<http://www.defenceiq.com/air-forces-and-military-aircraft/articles/regenerating-uk-carrier-airpower-the-challenges-an/>2020
target of 48 planes). The final total, however,
is <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26124894>likely to be much higher.
That’s a lot of zeroes to spend on something that
critics claim doesn’t work. So why are we doing
it? How do the criticisms hold up? And what does
the F-35 mean for the UK in particular?
What Sort of Plane Do We Need?
The uncertainty about the sorts of missions the
RAF and the Navy will have to fly in the future
is what makes a multirole aircraft so appealing.
Compared to the US, Britain is in no position to
buy a fleet of specialised aircraft – between
1990 and 2014,
we<http://www.airpowerstudies.co.uk/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/APRvol18no1springeditionfinal.pdf>reduced
our number of operational fast jets by more than
two thirds, with smaller numbers of
<http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2013/12/next-gen-typhoon-tranche-3-combat-jet-makes-first-test-flights/>Typhoons
and
<http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2014/10/the-uks-sending-a-fleet-of-supersonic-tornadoes-to-take-on-isis/>Tornados
stretching to take up the slack. Of the two, the
Tornados are
<http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2015/07/missiles-are-literally-falling-off-the-rafs-crumbling-jets/>the
pressing concern – they were introduced in 1979,
and the ones we still have flying are due for
retirement in 2019. If we want to keep getting
involved in overseas air campaigns, we need something to take their place.
The F-35 is the only so-called ‘fifth-generation’
fighter being produced in the West. The choice,
then, was either to buy into the F-35, or to look
for planes similar in capability to the Typhoon.
The promise that makes the F-35 such an appealing
purchase (at least on paper), however, is that it
can do everything: air support, bombing runs,
air-to-air combat –
<https://www.f35.com/assets/uploads/documents/F-35-Fast-Facts-Infographic-Horiz.jpg>three
planes for the price of one.
That’s a contentious claim, so let’s look at these roles in turn.
Supporting Ground Troops
The UK doesn’t have a dedicated plane for close
air support. While the US has the purpose-built
<http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2014/06/these-a-10-warthogs-look-like-perfect-miniatures-but-they-are-real/>monster
that is the A-10 Thunderbolt, the UK’s manned air
support duties have been divvied up largely
between the Tornados, Typhoons and the Apache
helicopters. The F-35 claims to have one clear
advantage over all three in this role.
“The big advantage that the F-35 gives you is its
stealth,” says Philip Sabin, professor of
strategic studies in the War Studies department
of King’s College London, and an expert in air power.
“With both air-to-ground and air-to-air, the idea
is that it will not be safe for fourth generation
aircraft – or even really heavily armoured things
like the A-10 – to operate in the future. They’ve
done it in the past, in a fairly permissive
environment against Cold War era air defence
threats… and of course they’re more efficient in
that case, because if no-one’s shooting back
effectively, then it’s a wholly asymmetric contest.”
In addition to not being shot down, the three key
elements in the close air support mission are
ordnance, loiter time (the amount of time a plane
can hang around looking for and engaging targets
before it has to refuel), and the ability to
reliably spot those targets from the air.
The bad news is that the F-35Bs that the UK will
purchase – one of the three models that are being
produced – is the least capable at the first two
of those. The F-35B is the model designed for
short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) – if
you’ve seen
<http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2013/05/first-footage-of-an-f-35b-taking-off-straight-into-the-air/>a
picture of an F-35 hovering, that’s the B model
you were looking at. Without catapults to fling
planes off the end of aircraft carriers and catch
them when they land (which Britain’s new Queen
Elizabeth class carriers don’t have), this is the
only way to get planes into the air and to get them back again.
The problem is the extra hardware that goes into
the B variant to make STOVL possible. Not only
does the engine have to tilt down 90 degrees, but
to balance the lift (and provide more of it), the
F-35B has to incorporate a giant fan in the front
half of the plane that pushes air downwards. The
fan doesn’t have a use outside of take-off and
landing, which means while the F-35B is flying,
it’s lugging around that extra weight to no benefit.
But the fan is also taking up space in the body
of the plane which the other two non-STOVL
variants (the F-35A and F-35C) can use for other
things. As a result, the F-35B has to use a
smaller fuel tank, limiting range and loiter, but
also has less space for ordnance. The B’s
internal weapons bays, tucked into the body to
maintain its stealth profile, are limited to two
1000-pound bombs and two air-to-air missiles,
while the A and C variants can carry bombs that
are twice that size. To cap it all, all that
extra gadgetry also makes the B variant the most expensive option of the three.
The good news is that all that isn’t the death
knell that some opponents of the F-35 would have
you believe. For one thing, modern fighters
(including the F-35) aren’t necessarily
restricted to burning what they can take up in their tanks.
“The big limitation of the B is in endurance,” Sabin says.
“We’re seeing very clearly in the current
operation over Iraq… the difficulty of having to
operate at range. Also, if we’re effectively in a
reactive environment where air[craft] have to
loiter, not just deliver the weapons at the time
of its choosing, then the F-35 is going to have problems in that regard.
“[But it’s not] like the old days, where it was
just a matter of ‘how far can you get an
aircraft,” he clarifies.
“<http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2015/04/aerial-refuelling-pictures-never-get-old/>Air-to-air
refuelling has changed that, and it’s so routine, now.”
Long-Range Bombing
As for the F-35B’s limited payload, that’s only a
factor for as long as you prize stealth over
firepower. The F-35 is adaptable – if what you
want is more bombs, you
can<http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2015/01/impressive-photo-of-the-f-35-lightning-ii-with-all-its-weaponry-lined-up/>hang
extra ones from pylons under the wings. Doing so,
however, compromises the F-35’s stealth
capability – but if the mission is to hit targets
that aren’t protected by aircraft or anti-air
defences, that’s not necessarily something you have to worry about.
As for ‘only’ carrying two bombs, Sabin argues
it’s a concern that’s been overblown.
“[People] talk about, ‘oh, it can only carry a
couple of bombs,’ [but] we don’t usually drop more than that,” he says.
“We usually drop less than that, in a sortie. If
the limitations are that you don’t want to
release the bombs until you’re sure of the
target, and you don’t want to put your pilot in
any peril at all, then those are the things which
are going to constrain you, rather than, ‘oh, we
haven’t got ten 2000lb bombs to plaster the enemy with.’”
The two bombs that a stealthy F-35 can carry are
also only half the story of a bombing mission.
Not only is an F-35 doing so-called ‘deep
interdiction’ (hitting things deep inside enemy
territory) hard to see, its weapon bays also hold
two air-to-air missiles, which means it has some
ability to take care of itself as it sneaks about
in enemy airspace. Two missiles doesn’t sound
like a lot, but this brings us neatly to one of
the other great promises of the F-35: that it can
identify and destroy other planes before they get
close to visual range. If the system works as
advertised (and that is definitely still an
‘if’), then defending pilots are looking for a
plane that can’t be reliably tracked on radar,
that won’t let them get close enough to see it,
but can see and engage them just fine.
Fighting Other Planes
That’s the third role that the F-35 is supposed
to fill: air-to-air combat, replacing specialised
fighters like the F-16. This is the area in
which, recently, the F-35 has received the
biggest credibility body blow – down to a leaked
report from an F-35 pilot who was pitted against
an F-16 for a simulated dogfight. The results
were, on the surface, pretty bleak: the F-35
pilot’s report was that the fifth-generation
fighter
<https://medium.com/war-is-boring/test-pilot-admits-the-f-35-can-t-dogfight-cdb9d11a875>simply
didn’t have the power or the manoeuvrability to
take on a nimble, dedicated fighter like the F-16 at close range and survive.
That’s not the sort of result you want when
you’re pitching the F-35 as, among other things,
the F-16’s successor. But again, there’s an
argument to be made that the test isn’t a good
measure of the F-35’s abilities. Yes, the F-35
might perform poorly in
a<http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2015/06/top-gun-2-is-happening-and-will-be-filled-with-drones-and-tom-cruise/>Top
Gun-style contest – but the idea is that the F-35
should never allow itself to get into that situation in the first place.
“Results of mock combat can be interpreted in different ways,” says Sabin.
“And the answer there seems to have a lot to do
with how far [an expected encounter will be] a
dogfight – a traditional turning, manoeuvring
dogfight – as opposed to long-ranged engagement
with smart missiles, where you don’t even get
into the fight at all, [and] the enemy doesn’t
know you’re there until it’s too late and they’re being blown out of the sky.
“That’s the area where, arguably, the F-35
excels, because it can get its missiles in the
air without the F-35 needing to illuminate the
target with its own radar and put the enemy in
danger before the enemy can get any kind of lock
on the F-35. So in this kind of classical,
head-on engagement, there are major advantages to
the F-35. Certainly over non-stealthy aircraft,
like the
<http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2012/08/beautiful-image-of-russians-fighters-piercing-the-sky/>[Russian]
Sukhois for example.
“Certainly if you set [an F-16 and an F-35]
against each other, and they’re turning round to
go off on each other’s tails, I’m not surprised
the F-16 did pretty well – especially in
daylight. But, in other circumstances, in perhaps
more realistic circumstances of networked
warfare, rather than artificial one-on-one
tactical duels, it may well be another thing altogether.”
But Does Stealth Really Work?
Critics of the F-35 like to bring up the F-117
‘stealth fighter’
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20209770>shot
down over then-Yugoslavia during the 1999 NATO
bombing campaign. How could a relatively
under-developed force shoot down a stealth
aircraft if stealth is as effective as the
military and the defence contractors say it is?
And if stealth doesn’t work, why are sacrificing so much in pursuit of it?
“Stealth is not a magical shield,” says Sabin.
“[The F-117 case] shows that it’s not
invulnerable. What it does, is that it
complicates the task of the opposing air defence.
It’s all very well saying, ‘in certain
circumstances, we could think of ways in which to
defeat the stealth.’ The current situation is
that opponents find it difficult to use their air
defences to effectively fight even fourth
generation aircraft. Moving beyond that and being
able to target effectively a stealth aircraft [is even more difficult].”
The stealth criticism also assumes that, on a
given operation, the F-35s are the only planes
Britain will have in the air. But that needn’t be
the case. One strategy that Sabin identifies for
the F-35 is the same as was used by the US in the
1991 bombing of Baghdad during the first Gulf
War, in which the F-117s were sent in ahead of a
larger bombing force to soften up the Iraqi air
defences. In the case of the RAF and the Navy,
the equivalent would be sending in F-35s with
their two-bomb payload
and<https://www.f35.com/about/capabilities/electronicwarfare>electronic
warfare capabilities, destroying and jamming an
enemy’s air defences, and then rolling in with
heavily-armed Typhoons. It also assumes that, in
this hypothetical air campaign, Britain is
fighting without the support of its allies –
something it hasn’t done since the Falklands.
Then there’s the practical question of whether we
would risk pilots on missions without stealth.
“[Whether stealth is worthwhile] depends how you
feel when you’re sitting in the plane and your
life’s at risk,” says Sabin. “We know how
sensitive Western nations are to any loss of
their own pilots. Any risk of that may well lead
to the operation not being conducted at all.
Stealth can give you at least some… not
insurance, but reason to think that it’s not as
dangerous as it would be if you were going in with just Typhoons.”
This All Sounds Expensive...
It will be – although the UK government
<http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN06278>won’t
say exactly how much the first bulk order of
planes will cost, or what it’s expecting the
lifetime operating cost to be for each aircraft.
You’ll also get a different cost estimate for
every person you ask – though Defence Secretary
Phillip Hammond (who seems like a good source)
did say in 2013 that the first 48 UK F-35s
<http://news.sky.com/story/1086720/philip-hammond-unsure-about-f-35-order>would
cost around £100m each. Of course, that could go
up or down in the four or five years between now
and the first UK delivery date of 2019/20.
So, the programme will be pricey, which has two
negative effects on the planes themselves: numbers and value.
“They just cost so much,” says Sabin.
“And that therefore reinforces the problem which
the Royal Air Force in particular has, [which is]
the lack of combat mass. Once the Tornados go, we
are going to have a very small number of combat
[jets]. They’re going to be very precious, [and]
they’re going to be really hard-pressed if we
need to take part in any kind of serious,
attritional air campaign. That’s the biggest problem.”
However, the high cost of the F-35 does come with
one, tiny silver lining. It means that any
creases in the plane’s design – the cannon, the
fires, the helmet – really, really have to get
ironed as soon as possible. Too much money and
time have been spent now to let bugs like these shoot the F-35 project down.
“One great asset that the F-35 has is that it’s
almost too big to fail,” Sabin concludes.
“So many nations now are in the programme, and
the numbers of aircraft overall are so
significant… that they’re going to have to solve
these problems – or it’s going to be an absolute
catastrophe for the future of Western aerospace power.”
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/departments/warstudies/people/professors/sabin/index.aspx>Philip
Sabin is a professor of strategic studies in the
War Studies department of King’s College London
with a specialisation in air power. He has held
research fellowships at Harvard University and
the International Institute for Strategic
Studies, and is a consultant for the Ministry of Defence.
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Please consider seriously the reason why these elite institutions are not discussed in the mainstream press despite the immense financial and political power they wield?
There are sick and evil occultists running the Western World. They are power mad lunatics like something from a kids cartoon with their fingers on the nuclear button! Armageddon is closer than you thought. Only God can save our souls from their clutches, at least that's my considered opinion - Tony
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