F-35 Maintenance Costs
$42,000 per flight hour that’s 7 switchblade drones per hour. It raises the question of whether the F35 would be cost effective if we got the planes for free (not $80,000,000 each ). Currently F35s manage on average 11.2 flight hours per critical failure (I got that one partly from memory and partly from googling [f35 11.2 hours]. For one thing, that raises the question of how many will be available when they are needed. For another how many pilots will have to eject if the planes are actually needed and avoiding losing them somewhere in South Carolina is not the number one priority. But hey it’s worth the cost (and risk to human life) to deliver 8 bombs per mission . The bombs cost about $500,000 each, so each costs only about 90 drones.
Is this a joke ?
One lesson from Ukraine is that piloted aircraft have been roughly irrelevant. Russia has many more and has gained very little as a result (they are launching missiles from rear positions out of Stinger range which missiles could as well be launched from the ground).
Similarly, crewed ships are not decisisve. Russia has them and Ukraine doesn’t yet Ukraine is managing to ship grain (largely because the Russian navy is hiding from the Ukrainian cheap naval drone navy).
As others have noted, “Every Army in the World is Obsolete” “
Ukraine isn’t racing forward because its military, like Russia’s military, is obsolete.
But then, so is China’s. And every military in Europe. And the U.S. military.
That’s not to say that any of these militaries are useless. Obviously, they are not. But what’s happening in Ukraine right now is a kind of “punctuated equilibrium” in the evolution of military operations. In Ukraine, drones—both aerial and aquatic—have reached such numbers and demonstrated such widespread capabilities, that many traditional weapons systems have become limited in their roles.”
This has transformed US miliatary procurement and strategic planning as demonstrated by … anyone .. bueller ? Well actually it hasn’t changed it at all, since the US is proceding with a continuing resolution (hurray for that) but, more generally, I see no sign that planning or procurement has adjusted. It’s almost as if actually preparation for actual possible wars (and therefore actual deterence of possible aggression) isn’t the point (as noted right here the day before yesterday).
Excellent!
A sea story:
On a day in October, 1964, at the end of “Operation Sea Orbit”, I’m on the 011 of the Big E during the fly-off . A Vigilante was sitting on a Cat waiting for launch. Couldn’t but notice, instead of his helmet, the pilot was wearing a Aussie trooper. Engines come up full with after burners, and then one engine begins to spew metal parts all over the flight deck. When they signal abort, the pilot returns the bird. Off the Cat, waddles, too low, 10 feet of the water, then starts to gain altitude. You have to be nuts.
At its best, the Vigilante was only good for 5 hours.
Considering that the F35 was intended to be a much cheaper alternative to the supposedly superior F22 (which was cancelled, but is still in service, and is indeeed superior perhaps), the entire F35 program seems to have been a colossal joke, and a bad one.
The original scheme was that the US military wanted superior new fighter aircraft, and the F22 was essentially to be that, and a lot of them, and that was to be the F35. When the F22 got too expensive, after much complaining, it was cancelled ‘for cost’. The F35 was to save the day, so to speak, and that did not exactly happen. As it ended up being the most expensive fighter jet development project ever.
I think we’ve seen that in the future, interceptor aircraft will be autonomous drones that cost maybe even less per copy than the original F35 was to cost. You might well predict that something is going to happen soon that will push that cost up, PDQ.
Skynet maybe.
Here’s a review of an interesting book called “The Kill Chain, Defending American in the Future of High-Tech Warfare”.
Book Review – The Kill Chain: Defending American in the Future of High-Tech Warfare | American University, Washington, D.C.
From another review:
As Christian Brose, former staff director of the U.S. Senate Armed Service Committee and senior policy advisor to Senator John McCain of Arizona puts it in his widely read book The Kill Chain, published in 2020, “Were a war to break out in the Indo-Pacific between the U.S. and China, U.S. aircraft carriers in the region would immediately turn east and sail away from China, intent on getting more than a thousand miles from the opponent’s long-range anti-ship missiles, but from that far away, none of the aircraft on the flight deck would be capable of reaching their targets.” He adds, “America’s forward bases in places like Japan and Guam would be inundated with waves of precise ballistic and cruise missiles.
For comparison, a small private jet costs $7K-$8K per hour, but it can’t fly faster than sound, carry a variety of weapons or have electronic defenses. $42K per flight hour is a lot. I would have expected something in the $20K-$30K range. A friend of mine spent some time at Bagram keeping fighter jets flying. They are finicky race horses, so they are expensive to operate. I’m not a big F-35 booster. Defense procurement is insane. I think that drones may be the future, but they rely on either reliable communications or reliable software. The latter is an oxymoron. We’ve only seen the start of the drone cycle. I’m curious as to how it will evolve.
It’s rather interesting thinking about how capital intensive warfare has become. Ever since the 15th century, artillery has been driving the development of the nation state. It was introduced in the 14th century, but by the 15th it became necessary to have a standing army with soldiers capable of maintaining and using artillery or fighting in coordination with artillery units. The old nobility of warfare was less and less important while the rising nation state increasingly needed revenue. I’ve been reading Robe and Sword. It has been fascinating.
King Arthur’s war, knight v knight rather than peasant.
‘Capital intensive’? Not necessarily.
It may have started with ‘molotov cocktails’ taking out German tanks in WW2.
It evolved into IEDs made from stolen artillery shells, and the hijacked airliners of 9/11. And has continue with off-the-shelf radio-controlled drones dropping grenades. Also, ‘relatively’ inexpensive missiles destroying hi-tech helicopters & tanks.
‘Asymmetric’ weapons. Cheap ones. Off-the-shelf. Readily available. Homemade.