The MYTH Of The "F-35"

Thank you for all the support on this video guys! Really nice after taking a break. Just to clear things up - the $1.6 Trillion stat is for the entire service life of the program, from inception to retirement in around 2070…

1.7 Trillion is the ESTIMATED LIFETIME COST, thats 50 years worth of fuel, maintenance cost, training cost, not to mention buying the actual aircraft.

There's also an Australian variant, the F-35OZ, with roo bars and a bottle opener...

The 30 percent parts commonality between the legacy Hornet and the Super Hornets is all bolt-on, modular parts. The airframes themselves are different, and rightfully it's best considered to be an entirely new aircraft that just is SIMILAR to the legacy Hornet. Somehow Boeing managed to con Congress into accepting it as an upgrade and not an all new aircraft, thus avoiding the competitive bidding process that really should have happened.

Afaik the 20% commonality figure covers all 3 variants, which adds a nuance that there's considerable more commonality between A & B or A & C. The 20% wouldn't cover the engine for example, despite A & C models carrying the exact same one, while B had a modified version the still retains some internal parts nevertheless.

0:19 Wrong. It's not 1.7trillion for the US taxpayer. That includes the full life of the aircraft and all the other countries paying for theirs. I am amazed people literally refuse to understand this. The UK makes and maintains 20% of all of them too.

I think the F-35 might actually be the first prominent example of an airframe managing to fulfil all the initial requests of all of the different branches. edit #2 Damn a lot of people need to stop quoting RT and Pierre Sprey in the replies to this, I get it you are all butt hurt and hate everything the US military procures but how about you stop making that everyone else's problem/stop lying through your teeth and twisting statistics. edit because people keep bringing it up yes I am aware that all 3 branches accepted the F-4 phantom but back in the 60s and early 70s the 3 branches didn't have such divergent requirements for aircraft and the F-4 was the first of its kind for a very ahead of its time Multi-role combat aircraft so it was pretty simple for it to get adopted by all the branches because it was either adopt that or wait a decade or more to be using something that was even remotely close in capabilities. things like the F-14, the F-15, the F-111 are all examples of multirole fighters that failed to meet the requirements of the different branches yet they all tried to do so. (these are all multirole strike fighters too)

People only see the BIG 1.7 trillion number but never saw the small fine print (for the entire life of the program).

Former Mil Engineer here, with no current ties to the Military Industrial Complex. $1.7t is the lifetime cost of the program... to include manufacturing, maintenance, training, gas, etc.... and that's cheap, and worth every penny! I'll tell you why that is, and the factors that people aren't considering. Let's use the classic comparison of the F-35 vs the A-10 for CAS as an example: $6k was the original cost PFH of new A-10s at 1970's inflation (the value the media uses most often). You can't fly a 10 passenger business jet for $6k PFH today. The A-10 is now way beyond it's service life so it requires much more maintenance than when it was new. This is not to mention the SLE mandatory wing replacement program and out of production parts that have to be special ordered. The A-10 now costs $30k PFH and the F-35 is $35k PFH. However, let's say the A-10 was still $6k. The F-35 would still be cheaper to field. The A-10 requires about a dozen support aircraft to operate in any AO, hostile environment or not. They require an AWACS with their fighter escort, 2 flights of fighters for CAP overwatch, and SEAD aircraft to take care of ground anti-air threats. Let's say those aircraft average $20k PFH each. That's $240k PFH to support A-10 operations. The F-35 on the other hand, was designed to operate with minimal support. It has better sensors than the AWACS, it's capable of a 70-1 air-to-air kill ratio so it can clearly fight it's own air battles, and the onboard AI can identify/target/prepareWeapons for a ground threat in less than a second while still outside of its WEZ .. which is better than any SEAD dedicated aircraft in the inventory (not that the F-35 really cares about ground threats..). The A-10 has to wait for the AO to be cleared by it's support aircraft before it can go in. That can take hours. This is why the A-10 has a long loiter time, because it's not built to fly in a contested AO. Once the AO is cleared, the A-10 can stay there for a long time and wait for CAS requests. However, what if your son is pinned down by an ambush and his unit is requesting CAS, but the threat to our aircraft is uncertain? An A-10 isn't going there to help him, but an F-35 will have no problem. But let's pretend that it's a 100% uncontested AO and the A-10 can safely fly in to provide Close Air Support. That bird is only capable of 300knots, that's 20min for 100nm (typical size of grid). Once the A-10 arrives he gets 9-line talkon by the JTAC to start identifying his target, which takes 5min. He has to put his targeting pod on coordinates and slew around and visually identify the good guys and the bad guys; that takes 10 min avg. The A-10 is doing a gun run (yay, brrrrt.. :p ). He's carrying 1200 rounds of 30mm (which was meant to kill primitive tanks.. it's as long as your forearm). They do an average of 3 runs with 3sec bursts firing 70 rounds per second (at $140 a round that's $88,200 in bullets). It takes 10 more minutes to spend half his load blanketing an area the size of a football field to make sure the threats are all dead (can't see them after the first run due to the smoke and dust). Total time was 20min to get there and 25min to lay down the brrrrt. A dozen aircraft were tied up the entire time to support him. An F-35 is called in, contested or uncontested it doesn't matter. 5min to fly to the AO, alone and invisible to radar. Before he arrives the JTAC on the ground provides grid coords via toughbook straight to the aircraft AI computer (which is even more powerful than Submarine computers). The AI (which is like a "digital RIO", think Goose from Top Gun trapped in a black box) has already zoomed the EOTS lenses many miles away and visually identified friendlies and enemies via transceiver and optical recognition, cross referenced with ground based intelligence systems... within milliseconds. The pilot looks through the cockpit floor with augmented reality in his visor, at 5 red circles superimposed on the ground many miles away. The computer provides recognition profiles which the pilot validates by marking the contacts as fair targets, indicating their agreement. The pilot can also see several green circles on the ground for visualization of friendly positions. The computer has prepared a Small Diameter Bomb dialed in to create a cone of blast 100ft off the ground and in the proper direction to ensure only those 5 enemies will be eliminated with the lowest probability of collateral damage. From CAS request to this moment, only 3 seconds have elapsed. The pilot decides that he's going to use guns (despite the superior performance of the SDBs and the AI's recommendation). He gets 10 miles from the target, nose level, and pulls the gun trigger on the stick. This trigger doesn't fire the 25mm GAU-22 cannon but rather says "OK computer, you can kill those targets" as long as he's holding it down (man-in-middle autonomy). The AI autopilot takes control of the flight surfaces and steers the nose onto the 5 soft targets. At 4nm the bird puts out 5 bursts of 5 rounds very rapidly, correcting between each burst and firing only at the exact millisecond when the highest probability of hit exists based upon thousands of sensors updating millions of times per second. This takes another 3min.. and 25 rounds total. Subsequent gun runs are not necessary. Total time was approx. 5min transit then 6min to perform like an electronically invisible aerial sniper. Zero additional assets required, except maybe a refuel tanker sometimes. Total cost of CAS mission for F-35: $7,000 for 11min and ammo. Total cost of CAS mission for A-10: $268,200 for 45min and ammo. Total value to Father with son on active duty: Take my tax money and support my boy with the F-35 please!

I note that the UK left one of the two intake covers to the engine in place while trying to take off, this time. Perhaps not so hard not to duplicate this error.

1.7 trilllion dollars cost is the total cost of the procurment, design, testing, production and maintainig aircraft, crew and facilities for the nex 40 ish years. Someone didnt read the entire report ;)

Little gripe but it’s a multi-role aircraft, not just an attacker or fighter.

CATOBAR actually stands for Catapult Assisted Takeoff - BARRIER Assisted Recovery.

You're not the only one who considers the F-35 "variants" to be completely different aircraft - the Government Accountability Office has been known to complain about it as well.

I think more important than how many parts do they have in common is how much additional tooling and change over is needed on the manufacturing line to produce the different versions

How expensive is the entire F16 programm in today's money, how many accidents did it have? Same questions for the F14, F15, F18, A10 and so on.

9:00 Japan isn't operating their F-35Bs from their amphibious assault ships. They are going on the helicopter destroyers.

One big difference left out of the video. Only the F-35A has an internal gun. The B and C models would need an external gun pod mounted.

Tbh the f35 has probably evolved into a bigger (and better) project and will also last longer than the original project could ever imagine

That X-32 slander was uncalled for, the X-32 is the happiest and handsomest plane in the last 30 years.