More On The F-35 Debacle - Its Guns Are Useless Until At Leasr 2019!

I - and more importantly, pilots who've flown and tested it - have had a lot to say about the new F-35 stealth fighter.

Aside from being ridiculously expensive to design and produce, the end result after a trillion dollars is an airplane that's too heavy, far too slow and not maneuverable enough to compete in air-to-air combat. It tested so poorly that the Pentagon had to ignore its on standards to pass it, according to a leaked report that  actually called the new F-35 unsafe.

Nevertheless, the Defense Department is going to purchase 2,443 of the F-35s in three different versions, for the Air Force, Navy and Marines, starting in 2015. And they're going to replace two superb combat airplanes with it, the F-22 and the workhorse A-10.

The latest episode in this sorry story? Along with its' other problems, the F-35 (AKA the Joint Strike Fighter or JSF) lacks cannon, and even when it finally gets them they are configured as to be virtually useless.

The F-35 uses a GAU-22/A four-barreled rotary cannon. And in order for the pilot to use the gun, it needs special Block 3F software to aim it effectively.

Block 3F's estimated release date? Sometime in 2019, over four years from now. Until then, the F-35 has no operable gunnery.

It gets better. The GAU-22/A  is  able to fire off 3,300 rounds per minute, but the Air Force's version of the F-35 is designed to carry just 180 rounds. And the Navy and Marines versions are designed to carry only 220 rounds. In other words, a pilot gets one  burst of about for a few  seconds or so.

That pretty much means that the F-35 is almost useless for ground support, something the A-10 it was supposed to replace is superbly successful at.

The A-10 carries a seven-barrel GAU-8/A Avenger in its nose, with 1,174 rounds and a fixed rate of fire of 3,900 rounds per minute. Not only that, but the Avenger uses 30mm ammo, which can devastate tanks the GAU-22 can't as well as taking out fixed enemy ground positions. The GAU-22/A? Just 25mm ammo, not nearly as deadly...but since these so little of it, it doesn't really make much of a difference.

In fact, a big problem with the F-35 is that while it was designed to do a lot of different jobs (far too many, actually) it really seems only fit for one, that of a BVR (beyond visual range)plane for long-range missile warfare. Aside from the F-35's huge cost and reliability issues, it's far too slow and unmaneuverable to engage in dogfights with competing aircraft, especially when compared to the F-22 it's supposed to replace.And its other weaponry - a pair of Raytheon AIM-120 AMRAAM long-range air-to-air missiles and two JDAMS, either 1,000 pound satellite-guided bombs or 500 pound laser-guided weapons - are primarily designed for the BVR function.

The F-35's defects aren't lost on foreign purchasers either, with a number of orders being cut severely or canceled. Israel, for instance was supposed to buy 31 F-35's from Lockheed Martin..but cut its order to 14 and may even scratch its F-35 order altogether as more details about the plane leak out.

Israel's Syria Strike Wipes Out Russian Weapons Designed To Prevent US 'No Fly' Zone

The Israeli Air Force conducted a decisive raid over the weekend on Syrian arms stocks warehoused near Damascus and at an airfield in the Dimas area, northwest of the Syrian capital and near the Lebanese border.

The arms targeted were newly-arrived Russian anti-air weaponry, radar and hardware, including advanced, Russian-made S-300 missiles.

Israel's main strategic interest was the planned delivery of these item to Hezbollah in Lebanon, but it also affected an interesting back and forth between Russia and the Obama Administration.

Israel had a tacit agreement with Russia's Vladimir Putin that he would avoid introducing this kind of weaponry into the region, and Israel would avoid strikes on Assad's forces. That fell apart just as the last one did because of the actions of the Obama Administration.


The Obama Administration has decided to establish a 'no fly' zone in Syria to aid the Islamist rebels in their war against Bashir Assad.

Contrary to what's in the linked article, the deal has already been drafted with Turkey according to my sources. The draft agreement allows American warplanes to take off from the U.S. leased Turkish airbase of Incirlik for operations against Syrian planes, assault helicopters or drones entering the no-fly zone. Formerly, only non-combat recon aircraft like unarmed drones were allowed to use Incirlik to fly over Syria. The Turks originally wanted the no-fly zone extended to Aleppo, where the Syrian Army is on the verge of defeating the rebels. Instead, the U.S. insisted on a much narrower area, between one half and three quarters of a mile.That makes little strategic sense unless the primary object is to provide a safe haven for the Islamist rebels close to the Turkish border to train,rearm and regroup.

The Russians have repeatedly told the Obama Administration that any attempt to establish a no-fly zone would be regarded as a direct intervention against their ally Assad and would lead to use of the Russian military to defend the Assad regime in response.When Putin found out about the draft agreement between Turkey and the U.S., he told Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman that all bets were off and responded immediately with a huge Russian shipment of anti-air missiles, radar systems and computer hardware.

The Israelis were left with no choice but to take them out...which also leaves Putin little choice but to bring in the Russian military directly when and if U.S. planes start intervening on behalf of Syria's Islamist rebels.

Russia reacted promptly to the Israeli raid with a formal protest to the UN demanding “that such attacks should not happen again… Moscow is deeply worried by this dangerous development, the circumstances of which demand an explanation.”

Stay tuned.

Obama Military Budget To Kill Tomahawk And HellFire Missile Programs

 

Aside from cutting our Navy to pre WWII levels, President Obama's new military budget targets what weapons we have left.

The new Obama defense budget will abolish two of our most successful missile programs.Raytheorn's Tomahawk, probably the world's best and most effective cruise missile will be cut by $128 million under Obama’s fiscal year 2015 budget proposal and completely eliminated by fiscal year 2016, according to budget documents released by the Navy. Given the present average usage, there will be no Tomahawks left by 2018 at the latest.

Aside from the severe financial cuts, the Navy will be limited in the amount of actual Tomahawk missiles they are allowed to acquire, from 196 last year to just 100 in 2015, with no Tomahawks at all in 2016. This was probably included to make sure that no one tried to preserve the program by shifting funds from other areas.

According to Obama’s proposal, the Navy is also going to be forced to cancel any purchase of Hellfire missiles in 2015, one of our most effective tools of the trade.

The president and his team are mandating this change without a replacement missile currently ready to take the Tomahawk's place.There is a new missile currently in development, Lockheed Martin's Long Range Anti Ship Missile, but like Lockheed Martin's other dysfunctional product, the F-35, the Long Range Anti Ship Missile has been plagued with massive development costs and overruns, has vastly underperformed when tested and might not be fully ready to be deployed for as much as ten years.

 Lockheed Martin, by the way, spent something like $14.5 million in lobbying, much of it aimed towards President Obama and Democrats. And the company has been credited in some corners as helping to deliver Virginia for Obama in 2012 by delaying planned  layoff notices to workers, followed by a timely last minute Pentagon announcement just before the election that no Lockheed Martin contracts were going to be cut.Probably just one of those funny coincidences, I'm sure.

Considering how other countries like China, North Korea and Iran are actually working to improve their naval and anti-ship capabilities, killing off the Tomahawk and Hellfire along with the other severe cuts mandated for our Navy is the equivalent of running up the white flag when it comes to our global military dominance.

This will not end well.