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Your number are wrong The total program will cost 4 trillion because the f-35 last 1/4 of the age of a f-15 or f-16 but they believe they can extend the life to 1/2 that of a regular fighter jet so the f-35 is 4 trillion not 2 trillion lol 😂 it’s always way higher then you think lol 😂 any thing with military is bang out another trillion or two. Trump order about 3 trillion dollars worth of f-35 it’s also the reason why a lot of Countries did NOT order it even knowing they could buy it until the war in Ukrainian started. You have to replace the f-35 twice as fast as a f-16 or f-15 it’s like having a Ferrari compared to a mustang one is going to cost three times more for everything.
The next topic should be the unmanned aerial vehicles that flew over langley AFB as well as other restricted airspace last year for at least 17 days, please.
"If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him." Sun Tzu: The Art of War.
Comparing the F-35 crash rate to the F-16 is also skewed by the fact that the F-16 is strictly a runway bird, whereas the F-35B is STOVL, and the F-35C is a carrier plane. The B and C variants of the F-35 have far more dangerous operating modes, so one would expect their crash rate to be far higher than the F-16. The fact that the opposite is true lends further credence to the F-35's superior safety record.
Yep. Just landing on an aircraft carrier is a huge risk factor that an F16 never had to go anywhere near. Maybe you’d have to compare against the F18 to get a handle on it. You also have to consider the age of F16 and F15 airframes to compare readiness, though. As they get older they need more and more maintenance. To me the readiness and accident rate of the F35 seem alright, tbh.
In the US we love to critics our programs and praise the enemy. Criticising the F35 is fine to improve but to say it’s bad and the SU57 is so good is just disinformation or dishonest
@@leoncarcosa5299true 10 are prototypes, the production is stopped and its RCS is 0.1-1 m2 by Sukhoi itself in demo test frontal (the most stealthy) without RAM the RCS is 0.4 when the f35 without RAM is 0.06
@@weilam03true and I thought I first it was also so our military complexes can justify their spending but the reality is most come from disinformation and many a naive to believe.
Before I retired as an engineering manager from a major aerospace defense contractor, I had the pleasure of being a system engineering manager for a major F35 subsystem. I had worked in aerospace over 20 years when I took the position and I was amazed by the complex engineering of the F35. The manufacturing tolerances, details and requirements were also very stringent. It was one of the most challenging and complex aircraft systems that I had worked on. Lockheed and the government gave us the challenge to reduce cost and we were successful at improving manufacturing quality and reducing costs by visiting supplier all over the world. The F35 got so much negative attention but those who know about the system and details can hear the criticism but we can’t come out publicly and discuss details about why the reporting was incorrect. The platform had a lot of challenges but it was the most impressive system that I had ever worked with.
You may be mistaking complicated with a good thing. As an engineer, how would you describe a fleet of aircraft, of which only 29.3% are fully mission capable and all of which have a known problem of fuel lines being ruptured by harmonics from the engines, for which only a mitigation has been put in place, not a fix? Unless of course US Air Force General Schmidt went before and subsequently lied to Congress earlier this year. And that is to say nothing about the truncated TR-3 updates and the now, still TBD actual Block IV upgrades which are going to be their own sub-procurement program because they are that unlikely to be achievable. So, from a military capabilities standpoint, how is any of that a good, positive and upbeat set of information? Or is Gen. Schmidt a KGB plant, here to sour the loyal citizens of the US on the mighty F-35?
@@LackofFaithify As you rightly point out, complexity is the enemy of reliability. Combat aircraft need high performance while yet being able to take a beating. We need the F6F Hellcat of modern jets.
Complexity remind me German Tiger tanks in WWII. American had the inferior M4 Sherman and the Russia has the T34. Everyone knows who lost. Today, I was told only two aircraft carriers out of 11 are in duty. It was fun for an engineer, not necessary in the field.
@@LackofFaithify Which fighter jet in the world currently impresses you the most? I know when Canada was shopping for an alternative to the F35, they looked at the Eurofighter, Rafael, and Gripen.
How will that complexity and those tight tolerances work in an austere war environment ? Heck, even our cold war HAS are no longer suitable for this delicacy
When I went into the Air Force back in the late 70's one of the 1st aircraft I worked was the F-15. In fact one of the airframe's was a 74 model! Anyway I remember how the Media treated the newish F-16 with all it's "new" tech. How the fly by wire was super dangerous. Cost overruns, etc. But it turned out to be one of the best Fighter's ever developed. I was also lucky enough to get to fly in both Aircraft during my 24 years in.
I hear ya'! I worked on '80 dated F-16A/B and '78 dated F-15C/D. Our readiness rates were in the 80% range, often better. We worked damned hard, but compared to the downtime and labor intensity of the F-4c/e, the 2 newer birds were a dream.
This video should be essential viewing for kids and gullible adults. Its a masterclass in how to avoid being bamboozled by propaganda on the Internet. Heartfelt thanks for sharing your knowledge experience.
Most Crew Chiefs don't know Jack about working on aircraft...😂. But that's only based on working with retired crew chiefs in the civilian aviation industry.
I remember when they were proposing the F-15 and many critics were complaining about how the F-15 was too expensive, too complicated for maintainers to work on and only a "single " mission aircraft.
Hot take, no jet fighter is limited to being a purely single-mission aircraft, as jet engines allow for a significantly greater payload than propellers. The F-4 Phantom had a payload four times that of the B-17 Flying Fortress. Modern targeting pods and data-link with recon drones make air-to-ground missions even more viable for aircraft designed to be fighters. Ultimately, dedicated attack aircraft are obsolete.
Whenever I hear a story about how an aircraft system is bad, overpriced, etc. I remember a 60 minutes episode in the late 70s breaking down how overprieced & fragile the 'new' F15 Eagle program was...
When a country gets into an important war and a lot combatants and civilians are getting killed, most everyone forgets or doesn't care how much a weapon system costs. Everyone cares about its effectiveness.
I'm pretty sure there is a 60 minutes show about almost every new airframe built over the last 50 years. B1B, B-2, F-15, F-16, the list goes on. I really don't pay much attention to the noise.
From an Aussie, we bought the F35s not for dogfighting but for multi-role functions. It's about combat coordination tech and stealth. We are pairing it up with the wingman Ghostbat developed in Australia.
No one buys modern combat aircraft strictly for "dogfighting". Not that any modern combat aircraft have any sort of the slightest struggle in completing said task.
Historically, an aircraft designed to fill several roles will be a compromise in every one of them! I believe the F-35 was designed as a group fighter or as a single element in a larger group. Rarely will we ever see a single aircraft in a lone sortie. That being said, the ability of a single craft is irrelevant as it was not intended to work alone. I do think the cost of each fighter does not reflect this group effort strategy, and the vulnerability of each craft should it find itself alone for some reason should be addressed. We (hopefully) learned from the F-4 the need for independent defensive/offensive capabilities (a gun)!!!
Honestly, the baddies not realizing how capable this plane is means they'll underestimate it. It's also the inverse of how fears of a superior Mig25 lead to the creation of a true combat legend.
Their trying to "shut down" the program from within. They know there are plenty of populist politicians who are willing to run on sensationalist slogans like "We could reform our basic education system and pay all our student loan debt with the cost of this absurd program!". Ruzzia and China know that the US loses wars inside the US, not on the battlefield abroad.
Isn't it the exact opposite? I would say they know how dangerous it is and thus push all kinds of negative news about it to decrease public support for it. If I truly believed my opponent had a garbage weapon system on his hand, I would praise it as an marvelous piece of engineering that strikes fear into my heart instead of ridiculing it.
A lot of the naysayers of the F-35 are elements of Congress who want to use the money for other pet projects, rival service command members wanting some of the budget, and a tremendous amount of Russian and Chinese propaganda. The F-35 is not meant to be the ultimate dogfighter as so many seem to think is essential (or even relatively common) in modern combat scenarios. If any aircraft gets within dogfighting range of the 35 or the 22, the pilot has made an epically bad series of decisions/mistakes.
Yeah its like how can you stop a missile thats 1 meter from you? You dont get in that situation in the first place Or how do you get out of a flat spin in a tu 104? You dont get in a flat spin in the first place
...or a combatant commander has figured out how to hit us where we're weak. We thought we were ready to kick butt prior to both Korea and Vietnam. We learned the hard way how accurate that wasn't.
if you are Dog fighting , you fucked up. Modern missiles can turn on a dime with high G-reversals and now many have counter measure resistance and AI in the seeker. We no longer have to point our nose to the target to acquire a lock.
Yep and when I get other people place comments from other comments sections and talk about how bad the F-35 dogfighting is, tells me they have no concept of understanding in how the F-35 fights. Networked kill webs, DAS, Stealth, new air to air weapons, new HMS, TR3/Block4 upgrades, ESM, ECM, teamwork and training these are all the words that matter for future air combat with the F-35. Not 1990s tactics' with airshow high thrust manoeuvrability and speed.
right. which means that they aren't "lying." they are merely reporting what they know, which may be lacking context. a context stretching Headline is an effective clickbait. just like the title of this video. 😉
@@RandomDeforge Is unwittingly repeating a lie also a lie? Is it intent that makes it a lie? If anyone blinds themselves to reality to the extent that they are tricked by the Putin fake news propaganda that is continuously repeated by the alt news sources then they are lying as well.
Some are definitely lying. I've seen a significant number of these comments that the F-35 isn't "ready" for WW3, especially in Ukrainian channels' comments. It's not hard to trace that home.
J-20 is bogus. Yeah, it looks like they bought a few F-22 models to figure out aerodynamics, but those huge turkey feathers seen from above are not, I repeat, not stealthy.
The SU-57 is as much a 5th gen fighter as the B-52 is stealthy. When you have the radar cross section of an F/A-18, you are not stealth. Stealth is a necessary but not sufficient part of being 5th gen
@@Jungle_Studio It still isn't anywhere near as stealthy as even China's 5th gens, and I can point to a single design element that's the largest reason for its comparative lack of stealth: exposed fan blades. Every other stealth fighter has some type of S-duct to keep them shrouded from radar, even the MiG 1.44 and Su-47 prototypes had them, yet the Felon doesn't. I suspect it's because they want to keep the engines spaced wide both for thrust vectoring and to make room for the admittedly extremely long central weapons bay, but the stealth compromise arguably completely offsets those two benefits.
Yeah, it's ridiculously rare. I'm all for doubting your own government but the anti-establishment crowd has turned into a fanatic echo chamber of lazy anti-west propaganda. Independent journalism/opinions are worse than useless if they only need to loudly disagree without proving better merits. Everyone lives in a self-indulgent narcissistic dream where they know better and are speaking truth to power, and they're entitled to that status at no cost of effort. Inevitably they point out how late stage liberal democracy is mocked and out-maneuvered by authoritarian regimes without realizing their ape-brained dissent is the entire reason why. This seems to have been the exact state of global politics in the decades leading up to WW2.
My hometown is home of the 173rd fighter wing. They’ve trained F4, F16, and F15 pilots and starting next year they are transitioning to F35s and I could not be more stoked.
@@SillySausage-mq3so it is. The harrier was specifically looked at to make the F-35B safer than the harrier for VTOL implementing all available lessons learned. Government may be a bunch of idiots, but they have their moments.
It will be noisy. I don't know if they are louder than the F-15 with its two engines, but on a one to one comparison the F135 is the loudest engine in the US inventory. That's just an unavoidable part of producing so much power in a small package.
The combination of educational information related to both the F-35 and media bias makes this one of the best pieces I’ve seen of yours. Simply awesome.
As an ex-journalist (and the son of one) who became a lawyer, thank you for this. I tell friends of mine all the time to avoid jumping at headlines. There is ALWAYS more to the story than a sensational headline. Alex, you've probably come across it, but a book I read in my undergraduate journalism days (Spring semester 1987, a year before I graduated) laid out exactly these issues: "Amusing Ourselves To Death: Public Discourse In The Age of Show Business". I strongly recommend this book to everyone as an antidote to the current media landscape.
So, I clicked to see "Wait, why is F-35 shit this time?" knowing full well about the plane and misperception, and end up getting amazing video about media perception, great job!
F-111 got a lot of grief in its time. I was fortunate to have an uncle that was an engineer that worked on the Aardvark, and he clarified a great deal of misinformation.
You can also blame Pierre Sprey and the Reformers for making the F-35 look bad. RT even brought that snake oil salesman onto their show even though he knew nothing about modern era air operations.
Cripes, yes. This is 99% of why people thought the F-35 was crap. Pierre Sprey pretending to be an aircraft engineer and lying for money on a Russian propaganda channel.
He knew the F15 would be the stand alone ATA fighter for the next 30 years too. He missed the by 4 years. It was 34 years before the F22 Until we have a huge war again and Win, 2 trillion over the next 60 years ain’t no bargain. 3.3 billion a year.
@@4fuzzybear closer to 35 billion, actually (it's calculated at over 2 trillion now), but to be fair, there's literally no other military program which has ever in history been judged by the same standards as the F-35. Nothing has ever had its total lifetime program costs calculated to include absolutely every single piece & thing, small & large all together that way either. It's a clever way for its opponents to make it sound not worthwhile, but it's still the single most combat effective program ever brought to fruition, and we often forget that it's really, like, 4 (or now 5,i guess) different variants of 3 different aircraft in one common program.
The 1980’s “cheap hawks” wanted to cancel all new weapons. It wasn’t till Desert Storm that they were shown to be dead wrong about everything. Now the 1980’s era weapons are aging and require replacements. But 😮new versions of the “cheap hawks” continue the legacy of the 1980’s😊
Doing some thumbnail math, that 2 trillion dollars amounts to about 13.5 million dollars per plane per year over 60 years, assuming 2456 F-35s purchased by the US over the life of the program. That's really not terrible for what it is.
@@411bvRGiskard You don't know much about forward budgeting in capital projects? Inflation is a basic parameter for any forward estimates done correctly. They are either identified and calculated in creation date dollars or end date dollars with the factor applied along with other running cost factors. The laughable point is that over 6 decades good chance they will be involved in a war of some sort so the budget set 10-20-30 years before is thrown out the window anyway. That comment sounds like a media comment.
Yeah, that isn't how that works. Maintenance costs only sky rocket the further you get from the date of production. If anyone tells you otherwise, you have met a liar. If anyone believes otherwise, you have met a fool.
@@LackofFaithify I agree with you that costs usually wind up higher vs. projections - but it sounds like you’re implying their projections don’t even try to account for increasing maintenance costs as the planes age. lol obviously they factor that in. I agree costs usually do wind up high vs. projections - although often it’s not actually higher than expected. Essentially - things need to be accepted by lawmakers and not create an uproar among voters. Lawmakers know this too - but if they think something is needed, but know that people aren’t gonna like the price tag, they need someone to give them somewhat defendable numbers, but ones that aren’t insanely high. So - it’s a bit of a game of lowballing, but within reason, or else the expectations of overage will continue to increase. (Eg boings probably gonna have a hard time getting another contract for rocket development, or if they do, they’re going to be forced to take more of the risk themselves.
To the best of my knowledge, and I'll admit this is me reading between the lines and making educated guesses based on what i think program purchasers would require: I think the F-35 is the very first fighter jet with what i shall call "Super Fly by Wire" SFBW. Consider an RC helicopter from the 90s. This takes $1,000s and hundreds of weeks of practise just to be skilled enough to get the helicopter to take off, fly around a little and land without crashing or damaging the aircraft. It is the single hardest RC model to pilot. By a very long way. Fast forward to the 2010s. Buy the most popular RC Helicopter. It is, of course, an RC Quadcopter, or 'Drone' A child cannot crash it. No matter what flight state it gets put into, releasing and zeroing the controls orders the Fly by Wire to automatically return to Straight and Level. Landing is automatic. Take off too. I call this Super Fly by Wire, SFbW or SFW. Now, imagine you're on the spec team at The Pentagon. Your children all own good Chinese quadcopter drones. You'll add this to the requirement: Piloting optional Detection of loss of control due to G-LOC? (Unconscious pilot) Put into a flight state with high crash and fatality rate? Pilot goes 'hands off controls' and/or requests an automatic recovery to Straight and Level Instantly the SFbW algorithm calculates how to achieve this and runs through that solution, saving the aircraft. The jet is essentially uncrashable. No controlled flight into terrain possible. No death by flat spin No stalling Automatic hover control, you just give it high level instructions, moved left, right, forward, back, up or down. From what I've learnt over the years, from pilot interviews and documentaries and, yes, making educated guesses, i believe the F-35 is the first of these new Super Fly by Wire jets. Because why WOULDN'T you do this? It's just software. It doesn't even have to be finished for the the IOC units. What do you think? Agree or Disagree and Why?
To be fair, this was literally the fighter jet designed for the “end of history.” When you assume you’ve either defeated or converted all possible peer adversaries, the F-35 is what the algorithms tell the world’s only superpower to build: “One” fighter for there very different services/use cases to brand “efficiency” and enough pork barrel grease to make this too big to fail in 50 states. But while it’s been a totally dysfunctional product at many stages of its life, one thing is obvious about F-35 in 2024: America is pretty darn lucky we kept the program going despite there being zero conventional state-on-state wars on the horizon to fight. It’s easy to forget now, but NATO/western military aviation used to be a wildly competitive + diverse marketplace: Through the 1990s, Brits, French, Italians, West Germans, and Swedes all sold highly successful 4th-gen fighters that more or less kept up with F-16, F-14, F-18 development. But *only* the United States made the leap to stealth and 5th gen despite the post-Cold War “peace dividend.” Europe is now so far behind, the has no choice but to buy F-35 as a stopgap. And is now trying to skip straight to 6th gen-which so far has produced only vicious arguments between French and Germans on what that term even means. (To think, these were once the two most militarized societies on earth…)
Honestly, the way that the US allowed the Europeans to "buy in" to the F35 seemed more like a sneaky way of convincing them to destroy their own fighter development programs in favour of the ultra-expensive US fighter that also means the US controls their air forces too. You buy into the F35, you buy into US political dominance of your country. So perhaps the F35's greatest success was destroying Europe's competitiveness & independence. 😈 In fact, if you consider that the US put an end to F22 production in order to convert the factories to make F35's, well I guess that's another "kill" the F35 has made. 🤣
@@jcliu And there will be no coventional state on state wars on the horizon because systems like the F-35 and the NGAD exist. No one stands a chance against them.
It’s such an absurd thought when you know the history isn’t it? All the heavyweights just decided to leave their militaries to stagnate and rot, not even bothering to meet NATO obligations because America does all the heavy lifting anyways? I see their point sure, but Imagine the amount of overwhelming force a unified Europe would bring if they put in a fraction of the effort and resources they once did as individuals? There plain and simply wouldn’t be any relevant threats left in the world.
@@CarbonatedGravy I don't think any of them read the Project For A New American Century. If they had they would have realized Washington never believed in or wanted any "peace dividend". Russia and China (and India and many other dissenter nations) certainly took its implications seriously. Diplomacy was tried of course, but faced with one nation's overwhelming desire to create a unipolar world order, that alone put peer conflict back on the menu, so now the world has to deal with Cold War II. Only this time it is less about ideology and more about the desire to prevent the kind of dominance this fighter was designed to enforce.
This cuts both ways. When the enemy massively over amps their weapon systems and then believes their own propaganda and simultaneously distorts and discounts the capabilities of our systems they will get a very very rude shock if they ever meet. I would much rather that situation than the alternative.
When all are yes men or die you might think you're invincible. Then Tyson enters the ring and says," Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth".
The primary reason we should know that it isn't a failure is that European air forces are replacing their aging F-16s with the F-35A. Why would anyone buy a fighter type in such huge numbers if it didn't work?
I immediately see two reasons : 1/ NATO air forces are forced to buy F35s because they are the only ones to support nuclear payloads. 2/ they are lobbied by the US and buy it in fear to be abandoned if they are attacked by Russia.
Remember guys, he does get paid by analytics on the video. Skipping the ad could hurt him financially. So let the ad play, just get up and grab a snack or something while it plays.
@@jonathanryan9946 embedded sponsor does not know about the ad being skipped. they pay out a flat fee for being mentioned in the video, and then referral fees for anyone joining it. the link for ground news reference is already the top comment. so, no, i disagree that skipping the ad hurts the channel.
Ground news does love to advertise. I don't recall any other brand being so persistent. Sometimes it's annoying but I think it's a good product so I don't mind listening again or fast-forwarding.
As a student of history I can say for certain that polarization in societies wanes and waxes. However, I also suspect that increasing polarization in the West is fuelled by our own media--which is fairly obvious--but also hostile foreign manipulation of media sources. I'm not sure how to precisely gauge the amount of effect the latter has, and if there is a way to do so, how to effectively combat it. Further, I have little faith that the general public has the skills or knowledge to source reliable information or distinguish it from misinformation and disinformation.
How can the F-35 be a failure when it has over 1000 flying around the world. If you were an enemy of the US, would you want 700 F-35s showing up over your radar and anti-air facilities? I don’t think so. Well it can happen anywhere and anytime. Don’t play with the gorilla, you can’t win the wrestling match.
@@planetvegan7843 you mean politics getting in the way of the mission? The ratio of K/D for both wars would make you rethink of who won those conflicts
@@planetvegan7843the only way the US 'loses' those wars is if they leave. Imagine if prime Mike Tyson comes into your house, beats you to an unconscious pulp but doesn't kill you, then his girlfriend calls him to come home so he does, then you wake up and say you beat Mike Tyson. Wtf are you on about lol
@planetvegan7843 Sure, let's compare the U.S. to regimes that had no value for human life for their own citizens🥱. I guess you missed the context part of the video.
Not only have certain factions lied about the F-35, theyve completely ignored how its technology has changed the game. The F-35 hasnt even reached its full potential yet.
Exactly - he had a good point about how “sexy” twin engine fighters like the F-22 are, but that doesn’t necessarily beat an adversary. To understand what makes the F-35 so incredible, you’ve got to actually sit down and learn stuff on paper, and most people won’t do that, especially the media. I remember a report a while back that an F-35 on a training mission detected a rocket launch (I think it was just a normal commercial rocket) something like 300+mi away, and cued the pilot as if it were an ICBM launch threat. I guess EOTS saw it? The situational awareness in the F-35 is beyond sci-fi level.
Exactly. I always giggle and ask why Israel decided to increase its F-35 fleet with a third squadron last year-before anyone had seen the Technology Refresh 3/Block 4 update (which is the minimum base for declaring it fully mission-capable here in Europe). It is not like the Israeli AF is void of experience of flying combat missions into S-300, 400 and 500 territory over the past 4 decades. Nobody can say that Israel has chosen this expansion (after flying combat) because it has no alternatives (It flies F-15, F-15 strike eagle, F-16 and has a bunch of F-15 EX on order. With that "pretty decent" combat fleet, I would think someone has discovered some usefulness in the "failed F-35" after all :-D
Agreed. Im still waiting for Capt. Pete Mitchell to get his hands on one of the f35 navy version. F35C should at least perform one of the following; 10Gs, communicating while flying inverted, and that pull up- enemy pass by you maneuver. The F35 is a sexy badass plane.
I'm retired UASF, back in the late 70's and early 80's they called the F-16 the electric lawn dart, now it's the best 4th gen aircraft on the planet. Go figure!
I was on the fence about your content. This video really seals the deal for me to subscribe to your channel. You really did your homework on your videos especially this one. Your sponsor has really became a key tool that everyone else should be using. Cheers to you kind sir!
I learned when I was kid that there is an attrition rate for all types of aircraft and of course the goal is to lessen this rate as much as possible, but some loss is deemed "acceptable". Unfortunately, the "media" still has the logic of a child.
Once again you delivered superb analysis, rich in poignant data, smoothly articulated, leaving nothing absent from the product of your work. Great piece Alex! I bet this one gets you even more of the recognition you deserve. You're the best.
Alex, you just explained why I turn a deaf ear to naysayers from MSM sources and turn to content creators such as yourself who deliver fair and balanced info. You provide opinions based on facts, which let's me to research for further info if desired...based on facts I get to make my own decisions, not based feelings or someone's bias. Basically, GREAT JOB!!!
Thankyou, Alex. I've come to the point that my default reaction to negative headlines, is cynicism. The more negative, the more cynical. I study history, so I know very well how badly people can behave and how horrible mistakes can be. Point is, the media is part of that badness.
When a Typhoon pilot won against an F35 pilot in a dog fight, he said that if the F35 had not been instructed to proceed to the dog fight without using his stealth, the Typhoon pilot would have lost hands down. In a dog fight the Typhoon is better, but that's not what the F35 is built for. If it fights to its strengths, it is unbeatable...
Losing to a Typhoon in a dogfight isn't necessarily a mark against the F-35. The Typhoon is an excellent dog fighter. What were the parameters of the fight. We like to put our pilots in compromising positions to make them work it out. It's like saying the F-22 is a bad dogfighter because a Rafale or A-10 have won fights against it.
@gordonbergslien30 bingo. Hence ideally the UK will pair them up. F35 goes ahead & uses its systems to seek & detect targets. These they'll pass onto the following Typhoons, they'll then hammer the targets with Meteor without ever needing to use their own sensors. The alternative also works with 'Phoons finding targets at max range for the sneaky F35 to close & kill. Great combo.
Hmmm, developing, deploying, and supporting a state of the art, high performance, low observable, ultra high capability tactical aircraft is expensive, challenging, and time consuming. Who knew?
The same companies that make our planes, have been making our rockets, and they've been saying the exact same things about space rockets. But SpaceX has shown that what they've been telling us is a lie. And we're being lied to about the costs of these planes also. They're expensive because we let them get away with it.
A lot of reporters writing on these matters of course have zero aviation, engineering, or defence expertise. When I heard the 50% availability number I thought ‘well that seems ok, not great, but not bad either’. When you hear reporters talk about submarines or naval assets it’s even worse. Often they have no idea about the operational cycle of the hulls (one in refit, one in working up, one on deployment). Plus you know, how they’re used in operations.
They're forced to report on matters that they hardly care about. That's part of why I detest journalism despite having the skill set for it. Journalism skill isn't enough, you actually have to be meticulous about your field and "nerd out about it" so to speak. So if you can't nerd out over fighter jets, don't report on them. Simple as.
@ yeah, I hate that they have degrees in journalism for decades now and that’s where most journalists come from. You should just get a degree in anything else and then become a journalist. At least then you’ve some expert training in something other than being a journalist.
RUclips is now shoehorning ads smack in the middle of “And THIS [30 sec ad] is AIR Power” curse you RUclips.. you’ve managed to steal my one brief moment of weekly joy
I use the FREE browser extension Adblock Plus and don't these ads. They try to push through at the beginning of RUclips videos. About a week or so back I started getting ads in the middle of videos. I went to Adblock Plus in settings and toggled it off, then toggled it back on. So now I am not getting ads in the middle!
OR, Vivaldi + uBlock (FYI...Vivaldi is the creation of the folks who _walked_ when Opera was bought by the ChiComs. It's Chrome with ALL the nasty bits yanked out.)
The US Army just chose General Dynamics and Rheinmetall as finalists for the 4000 Bradley replacement IFVs (well, a year ago). Could you do a Firepower series video about this program, the two finalists and the other three that dropped out. Or more generally the current state of IFVs (Bradley, CV90, Puma, Lynx) and their most likely future. Maybe even including anti air IFVs like some CV90 variants and SkyRanger.
I was at Hill AFB for the "Thud out" back in the day. The F35 has a similar airframe look as the F105. The improvement in avionics, radar, and communications make this a legitimate platform.
I'm Canadian and I've been griping for years that the F-35 sucks and can't fly in the rain and mad that we finally buckled and ordered it, but this video has turned me around on it, so thank you. The most compelling parts where the bits about scale of production compared to what, and the listing of first and most powerfuls. Great video!
I think it's the opposite. They are experts at it. The tricky part is pretend like "he knows what he is talking about" while spewing a bunch of disinfo himself. That's the mastery skilled part. That is not achieved by anyone else in the world.
The F-35 program actually managed to deliver a powerful fighter that's never been shot down. Meanwhile the Zumwalt program delivered a destroyer with no gun.
My criticism of the zeitgeist around Zumwalt…. It is actually a great ship. It just had key design failures. (Actually based on early misevaluations of technology readiness levels ) Those should have been fixed and we should have moved forward with a revised Zumwalt. Instead it is called a failure and all the good ideas and tech in the program are just thrown out because the proposed gun didn’t work out. And so we have FLT III Arleigh Burke: a very good class… but it has literally no room or power for any upgrades. I think we should have FLT II Zumwalt instead. That seems a much better investment in the future. Well … here is hoping we don’t make the same mistakes with “DDG-X” and actually build test and revise that into a good system.
Yea, what is the idea 💡 for that ship? Looks almost fake or, that's what the news is making me say and think. I'm glad the guy with the robot vacuum doesn't talk about ship's. He gets all lathered up about the problems with the F-35. Said he's from Italy. Sounds further east to me. He is a bot.
Don't forget that readiness rates also include aircraft that are used for training and testing. Naturally, combat coded aircraft take priority and will have slightly better readiness rates, depending on how much test and training aircraft are skewing the numbers
Thank you for your deep dive into this. Unfortunately many Technical journalists are also not experts or even reasonably knowledgeable in the subjects they report on.
Ryan McBeth looked at the backgrounds of hundreds of New York Times reporters. Ones with medical backgrounds wrote medical stories, ones with legal backgrounds wrote legal stories, but none of the reporters that wrote military stories had military backgrounds. NONE.
I and some of my buddies in the DoD research/development community have had dealings with journalists (mostly local or second tier.) I can state with full confidence that none have understood the technology we were explaining to them
@@kennethzeringue2727 These journalists have degrees in journalism, not engineering. A good many of them would have trouble getting the facts straight about an automobile accident.
@@MakerInMotion what lazerpig actually said was that “the a10 is not as good as you think” and he correctly notes something important: the best case circle of accuracy for the rotary cannon is a 30 foot radius. This makes it tough to use for close air support, unless you’re comfortable suffering losses to friendly fire. Incidentally, the A-10 is #1 in friendly fire incidents. So *as he notes in his video* you’ll see a wide disparity between combat veterans who had an a10 strike a *nearby* position, vs combat veterans who had an a10 strike an *adjacent* position. I have literally heard this argument between two combat veterans so - I think he might be on to something. His thesis is more nuanced than “useless” - you might give the videos another watch. 🥃
Thanks Alex. For those of us that have maintained cutting edge Fighter aircraft (Tomcat) it is very easy to see the hyperbole, misinformation, and lies in the media every day. We even get it from our political leaders if it helps their narrative. Keep up the good work.
You believe this chuckle head over the testimony of the Air Force's General in charge of the program earlier this year? Well, unless of course you consider 29.3% of ALL F-35s being fully mission capable a respectable number for such a low cost, low impact platform. How about the fact that the engine defect that causes the fuel lines to rupture are still only mitigated and not fixed? Or do you think the US General is a secret KGB plant, put in place to make the US AF look bad by lying before congress? He last name is Schmidt. It's a public hearing before Congress, so anyone can go read the thing for themselves. Maybe you should try that for once, instead of believing the people that tell you things that make you FEEEEEL better.
Agility of the F35 may be it's most underrated feature. It has the control surface area of a fighter twice it's size. No other single engine modern fighter even has dual vertical stabilizers/rudders.
That's a weird way to put it because there aren't many single engine crafts out there, most of them are dual engine. Though, I'm pretty sure that Yak130 has them. Depending on what you mean by "dual vertical rudders" ...may be I'm not understanding something, but there are rudders at the back of the Yak130.
@@korana6308 F-16 J-10 & gripen are all frontline single engined fighters. Vertical stabilizer is also know as the tail. It contains the rudder control surface which is important in a variety aerial maneuvers. Twin vertical stabilizers have greater control authority in high angle of attack maneuvers. Not only because of greater control surface area, but also because moving the vertical stabilizer off the centerline of the aircraft improves airflow. The yak-130 has a single vertical stabilizer & single rudder. Sometimes the vertical stabilizer also contains the speed brake but not a additional rudder.
"If it bleeds, it leads." was taught in journalism classes at university level in the early 1970s. I know. I was there. Changed my major from journalism to history.
I know more about military aviation both past and present than anyone else I know. If I was going to war I would only want to go in the F-35. The F-22 would be a close 2nd.
In a fistfight, would you rather have your son, in an F-35, SU-57, or a J-20? No need to comment; just answer the question in your own heart of hearts. I know where I would want my son.
Great video Alex, but since this is all about misinformation, i feel obliged to be *that* guy. At around 7:55, you mention that a 2.3% increase in click-through rate would more than double your effective click-through rate. This is absolutely not what the cited paper actually shows! The findings of the paper are reported as relative increases, not absolute. With a baseline click-through rate of 1%, your article will now have a click-through rate of 1.023%, not 3.3%! It's a very simple oversight, but you now inadvertently overstate the effect of negative headlines by several orders of magnitude. Sorry i have to be such a nitpick, but it's a very nice example of how easy it is to accidentally contribute to the proliferation of misinformation. Anyways, as always a great video regardless, and please keep making the content you do!
Great stuff. The general naivete about the military and operational issues is cause for worry, but the down right general ignorance of specifics of military programs is despiriting. This former F-4/F-15 & F-16 crew chief salutes your good work.
Alex is American, and it is therefore logical for him to use USA figures in his videos. However, I think there's a different figure that might help put the sheer number of operational F-35s into perspective. Russia has at most 25 Su-57s in service. That's if we accept the (sometimes rubbery) estimates of Russia's most ardent fans. Right now, Australia - in theory, a country with a far smaller military than a former superpower like Russia - has 63 F-35s in service, with operational weapons and trained pilots, and with the remainder of the 72 fighters from our initial order soon to be delivered. In other words, a country that has never claimed superpower status has nearly three times the number of operational fifth-generation fighters Russia can field.
WRONG. You can't compare a single engine jet to a double engine one. Those are different classes of jets , and in case of the F35 it is a completely different aircraft, class and a role - it's a bomber... and the F22, J20 (Russian MiG 144), and the Su 57, are all air dominance ( air superiority) aircrafts. Different roles COMPLETELY. Nothing even comes close to the Russian Su57M it is the best 5th gen jet by a long shot.
@@korana6308 HAHAHA. It took a minute and seeing your other posts to make sure this is a bot response. Laughable comparison. No one even pretends to understand modern missiles and why the F35 is designed the way it is.
@@korana6308 Yet it hasn't achieved air superiority over Ukraine ??? The single / twin engine argument is becoming a rather mute one, just like the 4-engine airliner is also going extinct The twin might make it back home if damage isn't too bad, sure, but it also increases size, cost, maintenance, fuel burn, .... and failure rates (much like ETOPS has shown)
@@Wannes_ what hasn't achieved air superiority? Russia is dominating the air in the most hostile region on earth right now. 2 engine aircrafts are literally the future. Every single fighter jet of the future has 2 engines, like NGAD, or the navy version one, or KAAN, or "mig 41" etc. The only exception is the Su75 which is a F35 competitor in it's role. There are no other competitors in that role, just the F35 and the Su75.
I love the way you present your work! You can hear the passion in your voice! I have followed you for a long time and love every story! Keep it up brother!
The problem is the public listens to media who don’t even know which bathroom to use, about the cutting edge of military and aerospace design and implementation. Clowns. Not talking about you Alex. You do an exemplary job ❤
Hence why we aren't making the decisions. I too think "ooh big gun brrrrrt hehe cool let's keep using it" despite knowing the many issues with the jet.
If you like the A-10, go watch some AC-130 videos. It not only has a 30mm cannon, but also a 105mm cannon! That 105 is basically a cold-war-era tank gun mounted to fire out the side of a plane! They have also figured out how to mount missile racks for Hellfires or small-diameter bombs on it, and come up with a different setup to fire missiles out of the rear cargo door as well. It also has a radar, which helps when operating in poor visibility. It can't carry the larger bombs that the A-10 can, but I think trading that capability for a 105mm cannon is pretty fair.
@sadlerbw9 , good luck flying an AC-130 in contested airspace. I love its weapons, too, and had Spectre fly in support of a training mission, but it's a big, slow target above any threat armed with more than small arms and AAA, and maybe not even the second.
6:05 The V-22 is right up there too. Guarantee the V-280 will get the same negative coverage to sell views and clicks. Fortunately, you made a video when the V-280 won and I just point everyone to that video to dispel some common misconceptions. Now I have a video to share on how the F-35's negative reputation continues to persist and how it can be applied to other aircraft being reported in the news.
I recently read that the latest Osprey crash was due to the crew ignoring three magnetic particle detector warnings. The gearbox was fighting for dear life and the pilot could have saved it by diverting and landing after the second warning.
@@ChucksSEADnDEAD I read something like that, but I don't recall what I read had put all the blame on the pilots. The chip detector warnings, by itself, aren't 100% useful for a pilot to figure out what is wrong or how soon they need to land.
Check how media coverage was on the F-15, F-16, etc. it was pretty similar. I think the F-35 could have been done way better (a vertical landing variant was honestly pretty silly, and made the entire platform way more expensive than it should have been…) but overall it is still very impressive, both in terms of price and capability. Really awesome video 😊
tbf the f-35 was being made for both the navy and air force. and it was also designed from the beginning to be export-capable and highly adaptable to whatever the buying country needs. adding stovl support was probably only a minor cost driver, since 99% of costs associated with that would've been for the physical frame and just the design of the vertical landing fans.
The simple fact is that media does not understand the complexities of fighter development and the F-35 is not a rare case Sukhoi was given the contract for the PAK FA in 2002 which become the Su-57 yet its 2024 and there barely 32 Su-57 due the massive delays with the project Chengdu built the J-20 as outgrowth of the JXX program. There are 300 built however in the 13 years its flown, its gone through over 5 engine changes as China continues to struggle with developing reliable engines for it aircraft. Also realize that China deleted the gun from the J-20 which cut development and design time Now note that with the Russian and Chinese programs, the sole users were just RuAF and PLAAF while the F-35 is built to meet the requirements of the export market Simple facts like this , the media glosses over
My only issue with the F-35 is the cost per flight hour and the fact that they took what was originally cast as a low-cost, COTS-leveraging aircraft and made it the most expensive aircraft ever.
For a program that's supposed to go for several more decades, it's a bit early to be calling it a success or a failure, let alone the best or the worst.
I meant not really as it will last decades and has already been the most produced Stealth Fighter in history so it’s not really a failure or failing rn and it’s about to hit a decade in 2025 its more so to dispel the misinformation that it is a failure and won’t be good when it’s leaning heavily towards success and shows it by countries wanting it and not having problems with it rn and it’s edge vs the enemy I guess we have to wait till it’s 15-20th year in service for it to be known as a powerful and successful aircraft which I know it will be same with the F-22 F-15EX like the F-16 F-18 F-15 has shown
You can do it intermittently though. And so far it has been mostly a f. , something which he hasn't said or talked about is that everyone is waiting for the TR4 upgrade and nobody really wants buying it at TR3 now LOL. Moreover it's cost is projected to cost close to 1 billion PER AICRAFT over it's lifetime. That's including everything - maintenance, upgrades and fuel. It's THE MOST expensive fighter jet aircraft in history, and the worst part is, is that it's just a bomber - i. e. a bomb/rocket vessel.
@@korana6308 Those projections are for up to six decades with the back end having the most . Whenever I hear about the projected total program cost without mentioning that it's for over half a century, I don't find them very credible.
Sorry, RU & CN are Gen 4.5 as they can't do Super Cruise.... and, CN lacks the metalurgy for their hot section to operate at combat ready duty cycle. again, NOT Gen 5.
Well I'm not and expert but I did learn how to read and judge the truth and learn when someone lying to me. First the Russians s 57 wouldn't stand a chance against the f 35 well it would target the s 57 first which mean first kill. Let's say one f 35 and four s 57s who would win now their are Sam batteries on the ground. Now the f 35 can tell these batteries to target all of the s 57s and they become junk in minutes.
Then why are they so afraid to send it to U. LOOL sending in the F16 instead of the F35s 😂😂 Precisely because they know they would lose not just to the Su57 but even the Su35 LOL.
My dude. My attention span doesn't often get me clicking on longer-format videos, but this one is damned-fine. I appreciate the heavy emphasis on media positivity/negativity issues and propaganda. Solid work right here.
@@darth_nihilus_ Where what? Full series production this year ( 2025 which had started this year in 2024), for the first time in history, full series production of those planes. Before that it was a small pre/initial production series. All this done whilst under the highest amount of sanctions of any country in history. The w. can't even do anything just like the Austrain painter or the Napoleon couldn't... even though they had the strongest armies of their time... Always sending the best and attacking with the best might in the world towards Russia and failing miserably each time. LOL.
So US Air Force General Schmidt's testimony before Congress was a foreign disinformation campaign? Only 29.3% of all F-35s being fully mission capable is a pretty low number. Upgrade TR-3 being truncated doesn't sound all that great. And Block IV upgrades being put on hold and now being transferred to their own sub-procurement project is not a good thing, but at least they solved the little problem of the fuel lines being ruptured by the engines harmonics. Oh, no, they didn't. Just a mitigation. Those fuel lines will still rupture, so either complete engine replacements for all current F-35s or..... Public hearings are public record, available for all of the public to read over on the House's Committee of Armed Services website, you should try reading what is actually said instead of what a clown's RUclips channel tells you.
@@LackofFaithify "It's easier to fool someone than to prove to them that they've been fooled." Mark Twain. AlexH just sounds confident. And that is ALL that is needed to convince anyone that they are speaking the truth lol. You just need to sound convincing. Nobody is going to be bothered to check anything, they would just believe you like they believed AlexH. LOOL
The pessimism in the US about our own military systems and equipment while exaggerating the capabilities of rival nations is borderline treasonous. Its actually getting beyond ridiculous.
Yep, it is truly treasonous to want to know why the Navy spent so much money on useless bath tub toys, even when it became apparent that they would be useless and yet continued to build them anyway. Or why an off the shelf frigate build that should take 3 years (the time they have been built in other countries) will now take 9. It is treason to call out the Air Forces laundry list of billion dollar, cancelled hypersonic missile systems with nothing but a bill to show for them. It is abject treason to question the state of the army's new not a tank vehicle who's entire design was based around being able to fit 2 into a Globemaster, when at most, using every available Globemaster in the inventory, would be about 200 pieces of armor being delivered to a well developed runway. These are all treason, and having to think is hard.
Yeah, it's starting to get quite frustrating. Though this is an issue across much of western media, because they are able to report without much fear of being suppressed, they are free to publish whatever stories they like and what will be more profitable. Here's two headlines and you tell me which one is likely to garner the most viewers: America's F-35: The Latest and Greatest Fighter, Warts and All America's F-35: Faces Cost Overrun in the Face of Rising Adversary Air Forces Both are accurate but one is clearly more skewed to making readers feel more negative.
It stems from kids (K to college) being taught that the US is "evil" and by extension everything we make is "bad." When you have teachers openly claiming to be communist, you can bet the kids have a certain point of view when it comes to US equipment.
@@LackofFaithify It's treason to lie and exaggerate for no good reason, which is what you are doing here. Show your sources. RT and CCTV don't count. We used to hang traitors for damaging morale and sowing discourse. Now you are allowed to say whatever you like without evidence or proof.
Its the way the system has worked since the early Cold War. Step 1: Enemy System declared far superior to anything in existence (so says Enemy) Step 2: Media takes Enemy's word as gospel, forecasts doom because of inferiority. Step 3: Military is tasked with creating a counter-system, that is on paper superior to the Enemy equivalent (and in reality, is even better than it is on paper) Step 4: Learn that Enemy system was overhyped in about 10 different ways. Step 5: Media questions why so much money was spent on such a ridiculously capable system. Step 6: Repeat the cycle. The cycle is extremely beneficial to the contractors who build the latest and greatest western equipment. Not sure who else comes out ahead in the game though.
Nobody bats an eye lol. Saying in 1 sentence that w. media was lying to them, and in the next sentence repeating the w. media narratives LOL is PEAK AMERICAN.
Well, since that idiot Pierre Sprey is dead, a lot of the stupid coverage has died down (no pun intended). He was prancing around saying he designed this and he did that, and Sprey NEVER designed NOT ONE DAMN THING in Aviation. NOTHING. He never collaborated, was asked to participate, etc in ANY design, test, flight, or engineering work on any airframe. What he did was low-level statistical analysis. That's IT. He waited til Boyd and the other guys who worked alongside him died, then began embellishing what he did, and then just flat-out started lying. He was an idiot of the worst sort, and I am glad he is not around to spread his lies.
Thank you for letting us look behind the curtain…! You have given us a glimpse of the great deapth and truly amazing capabilities of the F35! You put a lot of life time knowledge into sharing this amazing and impressive engineering marvel. Saying thank you seems so shallow…. just jim
Go to ground.news/Sandboxx to stay fully informed on military developments around the world. Subscribe through my link right now for 40% off their Vantage Plan, which is what I use everyday.
Your number are wrong The total program will cost 4 trillion because the f-35 last 1/4 of the age of a f-15 or f-16 but they believe they can extend the life to 1/2 that of a regular fighter jet so the f-35 is 4 trillion not 2 trillion lol 😂 it’s always way higher then you think lol 😂 any thing with military is bang out another trillion or two. Trump order about 3 trillion dollars worth of f-35 it’s also the reason why a lot of Countries did NOT order it even knowing they could buy it until the war in Ukrainian started. You have to replace the f-35 twice as fast as a f-16 or f-15 it’s like having a Ferrari compared to a mustang one is going to cost three times more for everything.
biggest waste of money they should have bought 700 f-22s like they originally planned
The next topic should be the unmanned aerial vehicles that flew over langley AFB as well as other restricted airspace last year for at least 17 days, please.
"If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him."
Sun Tzu: The Art of War.
They're undergoing block 4 upgrades to become even more deadlier.
Comparing the F-35 crash rate to the F-16 is also skewed by the fact that the F-16 is strictly a runway bird, whereas the F-35B is STOVL, and the F-35C is a carrier plane. The B and C variants of the F-35 have far more dangerous operating modes, so one would expect their crash rate to be far higher than the F-16. The fact that the opposite is true lends further credence to the F-35's superior safety record.
Good points, hadn’t even considered that.
They use to call them lawn darts 😂
Plus the F-16 is significantly older than the F-35.
@@PikkuKani F-35 has brand new tech in it not 70s tech that is now mastered. Brand new tech will always have its groin pains.
Yep. Just landing on an aircraft carrier is a huge risk factor that an F16 never had to go anywhere near. Maybe you’d have to compare against the F18 to get a handle on it.
You also have to consider the age of F16 and F15 airframes to compare readiness, though. As they get older they need more and more maintenance. To me the readiness and accident rate of the F35 seem alright, tbh.
In the US we love to critics our programs and praise the enemy. Criticising the F35 is fine to improve but to say it’s bad and the SU57 is so good is just disinformation or dishonest
True, and the realistic number of Su-57's is probably only around 14-20 in actual service.
its probably a tactic to make our enemies underestimate the weapons
@@leoncarcosa5299true 10 are prototypes, the production is stopped and its RCS is 0.1-1 m2 by Sukhoi itself in demo test frontal (the most stealthy) without RAM the RCS is 0.4 when the f35 without RAM is 0.06
@@weilam03true and I thought I first it was also so our military complexes can justify their spending but the reality is most come from disinformation and many a naive to believe.
@@weilam03 also to increase budget
Before I retired as an engineering manager from a major aerospace defense contractor, I had the pleasure of being a system engineering manager for a major F35 subsystem. I had worked in aerospace over 20 years when I took the position and I was amazed by the complex engineering of the F35. The manufacturing tolerances, details and requirements were also very stringent. It was one of the most challenging and complex aircraft systems that I had worked on.
Lockheed and the government gave us the challenge to reduce cost and we were successful at improving manufacturing quality and reducing costs by visiting supplier all over the world.
The F35 got so much negative attention but those who know about the system and details can hear the criticism but we can’t come out publicly and discuss details about why the reporting was incorrect. The platform had a lot of challenges but it was the most impressive system that I had ever worked with.
You may be mistaking complicated with a good thing. As an engineer, how would you describe a fleet of aircraft, of which only 29.3% are fully mission capable and all of which have a known problem of fuel lines being ruptured by harmonics from the engines, for which only a mitigation has been put in place, not a fix? Unless of course US Air Force General Schmidt went before and subsequently lied to Congress earlier this year. And that is to say nothing about the truncated TR-3 updates and the now, still TBD actual Block IV upgrades which are going to be their own sub-procurement program because they are that unlikely to be achievable. So, from a military capabilities standpoint, how is any of that a good, positive and upbeat set of information? Or is Gen. Schmidt a KGB plant, here to sour the loyal citizens of the US on the mighty F-35?
@@LackofFaithify As you rightly point out, complexity is the enemy of reliability. Combat aircraft need high performance while yet being able to take a beating. We need the F6F Hellcat of modern jets.
Complexity remind me German Tiger tanks in WWII. American had the inferior M4 Sherman and the Russia has the T34. Everyone knows who lost. Today, I was told only two aircraft carriers out of 11 are in duty. It was fun for an engineer, not necessary in the field.
@@LackofFaithify Which fighter jet in the world currently impresses you the most? I know when Canada was shopping for an alternative to the F35, they looked at the Eurofighter, Rafael, and Gripen.
How will that complexity and those tight tolerances work in an austere war environment ?
Heck, even our cold war HAS are no longer suitable for this delicacy
When I went into the Air Force back in the late 70's one of the 1st aircraft I worked was the F-15. In fact one of the airframe's was a 74 model! Anyway I remember how the Media treated the newish F-16 with all it's "new" tech. How the fly by wire was super dangerous. Cost overruns, etc. But it turned out to be one of the best Fighter's ever developed. I was also lucky enough to get to fly in both Aircraft during my 24 years in.
Those flights must’ve been awesome! Thank you for your service!❤
I hear ya'!
I worked on '80 dated F-16A/B and '78 dated F-15C/D. Our readiness rates were in the 80% range, often better.
We worked damned hard, but compared to the downtime and labor intensity of the F-4c/e, the 2 newer birds were a dream.
That's what i'm talkin bout! Thank You USAF!
I'm starstruck. Thank you for your service.
This video should be essential viewing for kids and gullible adults. Its a masterclass in how to avoid being bamboozled by propaganda on the Internet. Heartfelt thanks for sharing your knowledge experience.
I'm a retired Crew Chief and the media doesn't know jack sh$t about military aviation...
I'm a neuroscientists and the media don't know jack sh$t about anything
Most Crew Chiefs don't know Jack about working on aircraft...😂. But that's only based on working with retired crew chiefs in the civilian aviation industry.
The media doesn't know jack shit about anything. Research went out the window decades ago.
From one crew chief to another, damn straight!!
The amount of opinions compared to the depth of knowledge is as backwards as one csn only imagine
Why would they? They aren't military aviation(ists?), they are just their to fill your mind with shit
"Few aircraft in history have suffered the sort of reputational sabotage..."
V-22 at the back of the room clears it's throat.
thats only because the YF-23 was a better plane.
F-16 aka the lawn dart, the squishy and maintenance heavy Apache, the expensive one mission F-15...
@@saemonno-suke9959 lol
@@saemonno-suke9959They’re talking about the Osprey, not the F22.
Lol, yeah it's almost natural
I remember when they were proposing the F-15 and many critics were complaining about how the F-15 was too expensive, too complicated for maintainers to work on and only a "single " mission aircraft.
All the way back in 1915😂
Hot take, no jet fighter is limited to being a purely single-mission aircraft, as jet engines allow for a significantly greater payload than propellers. The F-4 Phantom had a payload four times that of the B-17 Flying Fortress. Modern targeting pods and data-link with recon drones make air-to-ground missions even more viable for aircraft designed to be fighters.
Ultimately, dedicated attack aircraft are obsolete.
@@Sturgeonmeister Not a pound for air to ground!
@@140theguyPepperidge Farms remembers.
The F-15 actually got NEGATIVE publicity?!
Whenever I hear a story about how an aircraft system is bad, overpriced, etc. I remember a 60 minutes episode in the late 70s breaking down how overprieced & fragile the 'new' F15 Eagle program was...
When a country gets into an important war and a lot combatants and civilians are getting killed, most everyone forgets or doesn't care how much a weapon system costs. Everyone cares about its effectiveness.
Same thing with the M-1 tank.
I'm pretty sure there is a 60 minutes show about almost every new airframe built over the last 50 years. B1B, B-2, F-15, F-16, the list goes on. I really don't pay much attention to the noise.
F-15 and F-35. Definitely the "worst ever" and not the best ever. -Russians
Awsome to hear that considering Australia also have the F35 .
From an Aussie, we bought the F35s not for dogfighting but for multi-role functions. It's about combat coordination tech and stealth. We are pairing it up with the wingman Ghostbat developed in Australia.
As a former supplier to DSTO the tech that is shown is tiny and the capability it really is capable has to be kept dark
AU bought it for no other reason than it's a puppet state of the US, which was bought up by lobbiests inside the parliament lol
No one buys modern combat aircraft strictly for "dogfighting". Not that any modern combat aircraft have any sort of the slightest struggle in completing said task.
Historically, an aircraft designed to fill several roles will be a compromise in every one of them! I believe the F-35 was designed as a group fighter or as a single element in a larger group. Rarely will we ever see a single aircraft in a lone sortie. That being said, the ability of a single craft is irrelevant as it was not intended to work alone. I do think the cost of each fighter does not reflect this group effort strategy, and the vulnerability of each craft should it find itself alone for some reason should be addressed. We (hopefully) learned from the F-4 the need for independent defensive/offensive capabilities (a gun)!!!
@@garybulwinkle82 you clearly don’t know what you are talking about😂
Honestly, the baddies not realizing how capable this plane is means they'll underestimate it. It's also the inverse of how fears of a superior Mig25 lead to the creation of a true combat legend.
Yeah like the bomber/missle gap in the 60s. Soviets dug it to their detriment.
Their trying to "shut down" the program from within. They know there are plenty of populist politicians who are willing to run on sensationalist slogans like "We could reform our basic education system and pay all our student loan debt with the cost of this absurd program!".
Ruzzia and China know that the US loses wars inside the US, not on the battlefield abroad.
Missile gap? Forget about the damn missile gap man…. it’s the mineshaft gap we’ve got to worry about.
@@miamijules2149 no reason to get sexual
Isn't it the exact opposite? I would say they know how dangerous it is and thus push all kinds of negative news about it to decrease public support for it. If I truly believed my opponent had a garbage weapon system on his hand, I would praise it as an marvelous piece of engineering that strikes fear into my heart instead of ridiculing it.
A lot of the naysayers of the F-35 are elements of Congress who want to use the money for other pet projects, rival service command members wanting some of the budget, and a tremendous amount of Russian and Chinese propaganda.
The F-35 is not meant to be the ultimate dogfighter as so many seem to think is essential (or even relatively common) in modern combat scenarios. If any aircraft gets within dogfighting range of the 35 or the 22, the pilot has made an epically bad series of decisions/mistakes.
Yeah its like
how can you stop a missile thats 1 meter from you?
You dont get in that situation in the first place
Or how do you get out of a flat spin in a tu 104?
You dont get in a flat spin in the first place
...or a combatant commander has figured out how to hit us where we're weak.
We thought we were ready to kick butt prior to both Korea and Vietnam.
We learned the hard way how accurate that wasn't.
if you are Dog fighting , you fucked up. Modern missiles can turn on a dime with high G-reversals and now many have counter measure resistance and AI in the seeker. We no longer have to point our nose to the target to acquire a lock.
Yep and when I get other people place comments from other comments sections and talk about how bad the F-35 dogfighting is, tells me they have no concept of understanding in how the F-35 fights.
Networked kill webs, DAS, Stealth, new air to air weapons, new HMS, TR3/Block4 upgrades, ESM, ECM, teamwork and training these are all the words that matter for future air combat with the F-35.
Not 1990s tactics' with airshow high thrust manoeuvrability and speed.
Then why do they have GUNS? !!!!!
Public: Why don't we see more good news!
Media: Because when we post good news, no one reads it.
To put a finer point on it.
Media: Because you don't want to.
Not just lying they are nearly absolutely clueless about what they are talking about.
right. which means that they aren't "lying." they are merely reporting what they know, which may be lacking context. a context stretching Headline is an effective clickbait. just like the title of this video. 😉
@@RandomDeforge Is unwittingly repeating a lie also a lie? Is it intent that makes it a lie? If anyone blinds themselves to reality to the extent that they are tricked by the Putin fake news propaganda that is continuously repeated by the alt news sources then they are lying as well.
Some are definitely lying. I've seen a significant number of these comments that the F-35 isn't "ready" for WW3, especially in Ukrainian channels' comments. It's not hard to trace that home.
J-20 is bogus. Yeah, it looks like they bought a few F-22 models to figure out aerodynamics, but those huge turkey feathers seen from above are not, I repeat, not stealthy.
@@RandomDeforge RT, for instance, is intentionally lying. Military Watch Magazine too.
A lot of sources get paid to spread Russian disinformation.
The SU-57 is as much a 5th gen fighter as the B-52 is stealthy. When you have the radar cross section of an F/A-18, you are not stealth. Stealth is a necessary but not sufficient part of being 5th gen
5th generation requires "stealth in mind already in the construction" ... ther's no word of "archieving stealth to some defined degree"^^
When you can see the rivet holes on your "stealth" bird from 20m away, yeah....
@@trentvlak you guys really still confuse the pakfa prototypes for the production variant
@@Jungle_Studio It still isn't anywhere near as stealthy as even China's 5th gens, and I can point to a single design element that's the largest reason for its comparative lack of stealth: exposed fan blades. Every other stealth fighter has some type of S-duct to keep them shrouded from radar, even the MiG 1.44 and Su-47 prototypes had them, yet the Felon doesn't. I suspect it's because they want to keep the engines spaced wide both for thrust vectoring and to make room for the admittedly extremely long central weapons bay, but the stealth compromise arguably completely offsets those two benefits.
@@Jungle_Studio still over 8 times less stealthy then f35
Welcome back to Alex! It is so nice to listen to Sandboxx News.
ignoring the f35 stuff, this was the best discussion I've seen about media bias, the money that drives media bias and the psychology......thanks
Yeah, it's ridiculously rare. I'm all for doubting your own government but the anti-establishment crowd has turned into a fanatic echo chamber of lazy anti-west propaganda. Independent journalism/opinions are worse than useless if they only need to loudly disagree without proving better merits.
Everyone lives in a self-indulgent narcissistic dream where they know better and are speaking truth to power, and they're entitled to that status at no cost of effort. Inevitably they point out how late stage liberal democracy is mocked and out-maneuvered by authoritarian regimes without realizing their ape-brained dissent is the entire reason why. This seems to have been the exact state of global politics in the decades leading up to WW2.
My hometown is home of the 173rd fighter wing. They’ve trained F4, F16, and F15 pilots and starting next year they are transitioning to F35s and I could not be more stoked.
I hope the F 35 is safer than the harrier.
@@SillySausage-mq3so it is. The harrier was specifically looked at to make the F-35B safer than the harrier for VTOL implementing all available lessons learned.
Government may be a bunch of idiots, but they have their moments.
It will be noisy. I don't know if they are louder than the F-15 with its two engines, but on a one to one comparison the F135 is the loudest engine in the US inventory. That's just an unavoidable part of producing so much power in a small package.
I envy you
@@SillySausage-mq3so only F35Bs use VTOL.
The combination of educational information related to both the F-35 and media bias makes this one of the best pieces I’ve seen of yours. Simply awesome.
"17 years since it first took to the sky..."
Thanks Alex...
Now my back hurts again and I already took my Celebrex for the day.
Media biases? Media lying to us? Say it ain’t so Alex!😂😂😂
Yep.
Media that was infiltrated by Yellow men with smol peepee.
As an ex-journalist (and the son of one) who became a lawyer, thank you for this. I tell friends of mine all the time to avoid jumping at headlines. There is ALWAYS more to the story than a sensational headline. Alex, you've probably come across it, but a book I read in my undergraduate journalism days (Spring semester 1987, a year before I graduated) laid out exactly these issues: "Amusing Ourselves To Death: Public Discourse In The Age of Show Business". I strongly recommend this book to everyone as an antidote to the current media landscape.
So, I clicked to see "Wait, why is F-35 shit this time?" knowing full well about the plane and misperception, and end up getting amazing video about media perception, great job!
F-111 got a lot of grief in its time. I was fortunate to have an uncle that was an engineer that worked on the Aardvark, and he clarified a great deal of misinformation.
My Dad was USAF SAC and worked on the B47 B52 and was never a F111 fan. Said it leaked like a sieve.
You need a raise from Ground News. This whole video was an ad for them! 😂😂
You can also blame Pierre Sprey and the Reformers for making the F-35 look bad. RT even brought that snake oil salesman onto their show even though he knew nothing about modern era air operations.
Cripes, yes. This is 99% of why people thought the F-35 was crap. Pierre Sprey pretending to be an aircraft engineer and lying for money on a Russian propaganda channel.
He knew the F15 would be the stand alone ATA fighter for the next 30 years too. He missed the by 4 years. It was 34 years before the F22
Until we have a huge war again and Win, 2 trillion over the next 60 years ain’t no bargain. 3.3 billion a year.
@@4fuzzybear closer to 35 billion, actually (it's calculated at over 2 trillion now), but to be fair, there's literally no other military program which has ever in history been judged by the same standards as the F-35. Nothing has ever had its total lifetime program costs calculated to include absolutely every single piece & thing, small & large all together that way either. It's a clever way for its opponents to make it sound not worthwhile, but it's still the single most combat effective program ever brought to fruition, and we often forget that it's really, like, 4 (or now 5,i guess) different variants of 3 different aircraft in one common program.
“Even though he knew nothing” yeah that was kind of the whole point they did it.
The 1980’s “cheap hawks” wanted to cancel all new weapons. It wasn’t till Desert Storm that they were shown to be dead wrong about everything. Now the 1980’s era weapons are aging and require replacements. But 😮new versions of the “cheap hawks” continue the legacy of the 1980’s😊
Doing some thumbnail math, that 2 trillion dollars amounts to about 13.5 million dollars per plane per year over 60 years, assuming 2456 F-35s purchased by the US over the life of the program. That's really not terrible for what it is.
You really think 2 Trillion won’t inflate incredibly higher by the time we get there and look back?
@@411bvRGiskard That'd be true for any fighter jet built now, unless you decided to cut support by 40 years.
@@411bvRGiskard You don't know much about forward budgeting in capital projects? Inflation is a basic parameter for any forward estimates done correctly. They are either identified and calculated in creation date dollars or end date dollars with the factor applied along with other running cost factors. The laughable point is that over 6 decades good chance they will be involved in a war of some sort so the budget set 10-20-30 years before is thrown out the window anyway. That comment sounds like a media comment.
Yeah, that isn't how that works. Maintenance costs only sky rocket the further you get from the date of production. If anyone tells you otherwise, you have met a liar. If anyone believes otherwise, you have met a fool.
@@LackofFaithify I agree with you that costs usually wind up higher vs. projections - but it sounds like you’re implying their projections don’t even try to account for increasing maintenance costs as the planes age. lol obviously they factor that in.
I agree costs usually do wind up high vs. projections - although often it’s not actually higher than expected. Essentially - things need to be accepted by lawmakers and not create an uproar among voters. Lawmakers know this too - but if they think something is needed, but know that people aren’t gonna like the price tag, they need someone to give them somewhat defendable numbers, but ones that aren’t insanely high.
So - it’s a bit of a game of lowballing, but within reason, or else the expectations of overage will continue to increase. (Eg boings probably gonna have a hard time getting another contract for rocket development, or if they do, they’re going to be forced to take more of the risk themselves.
To the best of my knowledge, and I'll admit this is me reading between the lines and making educated guesses based on what i think program purchasers would require:
I think the F-35 is the very first fighter jet with what i shall call "Super Fly by Wire"
SFBW.
Consider an RC helicopter from the 90s. This takes $1,000s and hundreds of weeks of practise just to be skilled enough to get the helicopter to take off, fly around a little and land without crashing or damaging the aircraft.
It is the single hardest RC model to pilot. By a very long way.
Fast forward to the 2010s.
Buy the most popular RC Helicopter. It is, of course, an RC Quadcopter, or 'Drone'
A child cannot crash it. No matter what flight state it gets put into, releasing and zeroing the controls orders the Fly by Wire to automatically return to Straight and Level.
Landing is automatic.
Take off too.
I call this Super Fly by Wire, SFbW or SFW.
Now, imagine you're on the spec team at The Pentagon.
Your children all own good Chinese quadcopter drones.
You'll add this to the requirement:
Piloting optional
Detection of loss of control due to G-LOC? (Unconscious pilot)
Put into a flight state with high crash and fatality rate?
Pilot goes 'hands off controls' and/or requests an automatic recovery to Straight and Level
Instantly the SFbW algorithm calculates how to achieve this and runs through that solution, saving the aircraft.
The jet is essentially uncrashable. No controlled flight into terrain possible.
No death by flat spin
No stalling
Automatic hover control, you just give it high level instructions, moved left, right, forward, back, up or down.
From what I've learnt over the years, from pilot interviews and documentaries and, yes, making educated guesses, i believe the F-35 is the first of these new Super Fly by Wire jets.
Because why WOULDN'T you do this? It's just software.
It doesn't even have to be finished for the the IOC units.
What do you think?
Agree or Disagree and Why?
To be fair, this was literally the fighter jet designed for the “end of history.” When you assume you’ve either defeated or converted all possible peer adversaries, the F-35 is what the algorithms tell the world’s only superpower to build: “One” fighter for there very different services/use cases to brand “efficiency” and enough pork barrel grease to make this too big to fail in 50 states.
But while it’s been a totally dysfunctional product at many stages of its life, one thing is obvious about F-35 in 2024: America is pretty darn lucky we kept the program going despite there being zero conventional state-on-state wars on the horizon to fight. It’s easy to forget now, but NATO/western military aviation used to be a wildly competitive + diverse marketplace: Through the 1990s, Brits, French, Italians, West Germans, and Swedes all sold highly successful 4th-gen fighters that more or less kept up with F-16, F-14, F-18 development. But *only* the United States made the leap to stealth and 5th gen despite the post-Cold War “peace dividend.” Europe is now so far behind, the has no choice but to buy F-35 as a stopgap. And is now trying to skip straight to 6th gen-which so far has produced only vicious arguments between French and Germans on what that term even means. (To think, these were once the two most militarized societies on earth…)
Honestly, the way that the US allowed the Europeans to "buy in" to the F35 seemed more like a sneaky way of convincing them to destroy their own fighter development programs in favour of the ultra-expensive US fighter that also means the US controls their air forces too. You buy into the F35, you buy into US political dominance of your country. So perhaps the F35's greatest success was destroying Europe's competitiveness & independence. 😈
In fact, if you consider that the US put an end to F22 production in order to convert the factories to make F35's, well I guess that's another "kill" the F35 has made. 🤣
@@jcliu And there will be no coventional state on state wars on the horizon because systems like the F-35 and the NGAD exist. No one stands a chance against them.
It’s such an absurd thought when you know the history isn’t it? All the heavyweights just decided to leave their militaries to stagnate and rot, not even bothering to meet NATO obligations because America does all the heavy lifting anyways? I see their point sure, but Imagine the amount of overwhelming force a unified Europe would bring if they put in a fraction of the effort and resources they once did as individuals? There plain and simply wouldn’t be any relevant threats left in the world.
Wrong. The B-2 was designed TO END modern human civilization as we know it.
@@CarbonatedGravy I don't think any of them read the Project For A New American Century. If they had they would have realized Washington never believed in or wanted any "peace dividend". Russia and China (and India and many other dissenter nations) certainly took its implications seriously. Diplomacy was tried of course, but faced with one nation's overwhelming desire to create a unipolar world order, that alone put peer conflict back on the menu, so now the world has to deal with Cold War II. Only this time it is less about ideology and more about the desire to prevent the kind of dominance this fighter was designed to enforce.
This cuts both ways. When the enemy massively over amps their weapon systems and then believes their own propaganda and simultaneously distorts and discounts the capabilities of our systems they will get a very very rude shock if they ever meet. I would much rather that situation than the alternative.
We're talking about china. Huh?
Third way is to have a media with a brain and some minimal believabillity.
When all are yes men or die you might think you're invincible. Then Tyson enters the ring and says," Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth".
...and the F-15 was born lol
Sounds like what happened in Ukraine.
The primary reason we should know that it isn't a failure is that European air forces are replacing their aging F-16s with the F-35A. Why would anyone buy a fighter type in such huge numbers if it didn't work?
I immediately see two reasons :
1/ NATO air forces are forced to buy F35s because they are the only ones to support nuclear payloads.
2/ they are lobbied by the US and buy it in fear to be abandoned if they are attacked by Russia.
And they even make their own competent fighters and still chose the F35.
4:38 to skip the ad because you already know about ground news
bless you
Remember guys, he does get paid by analytics on the video. Skipping the ad could hurt him financially. So let the ad play, just get up and grab a snack or something while it plays.
@@jonathanryan9946 embedded sponsor does not know about the ad being skipped. they pay out a flat fee for being mentioned in the video, and then referral fees for anyone joining it. the link for ground news reference is already the top comment. so, no, i disagree that skipping the ad hurts the channel.
Ground news does love to advertise. I don't recall any other brand being so persistent. Sometimes it's annoying but I think it's a good product so I don't mind listening again or fast-forwarding.
Please do this regularly
"I'm Alex Hollings, and this is AIRPOWER!" is almost as cool to hear as, "I am Spartacus!".
This is Sparta!
You need a full beard to be able to say that...
Is it cool tho? Sounds like every murican TV salespitch..
As a student of history I can say for certain that polarization in societies wanes and waxes. However, I also suspect that increasing polarization in the West is fuelled by our own media--which is fairly obvious--but also hostile foreign manipulation of media sources. I'm not sure how to precisely gauge the amount of effect the latter has, and if there is a way to do so, how to effectively combat it. Further, I have little faith that the general public has the skills or knowledge to source reliable information or distinguish it from misinformation and disinformation.
The rise of negative partisanship is well documented.
How can the F-35 be a failure when it has over 1000 flying around the world. If you were an enemy of the US, would you want 700 F-35s showing up over your radar and anti-air facilities? I don’t think so. Well it can happen anywhere and anytime. Don’t play with the gorilla, you can’t win the wrestling match.
As an enemy your problem is they wouldn't show up on your radar until it was too late.
Vietnamese, taliban. And that was your entire military.
@@planetvegan7843 you mean politics getting in the way of the mission? The ratio of K/D for both wars would make you rethink of who won those conflicts
@@planetvegan7843the only way the US 'loses' those wars is if they leave.
Imagine if prime Mike Tyson comes into your house, beats you to an unconscious pulp but doesn't kill you, then his girlfriend calls him to come home so he does, then you wake up and say you beat Mike Tyson. Wtf are you on about lol
@planetvegan7843 Sure, let's compare the U.S. to regimes that had no value for human life for their own citizens🥱.
I guess you missed the context part of the video.
Not only have certain factions lied about the F-35, theyve completely ignored how its technology has changed the game.
The F-35 hasnt even reached its full potential yet.
Exactly - he had a good point about how “sexy” twin engine fighters like the F-22 are, but that doesn’t necessarily beat an adversary. To understand what makes the F-35 so incredible, you’ve got to actually sit down and learn stuff on paper, and most people won’t do that, especially the media.
I remember a report a while back that an F-35 on a training mission detected a rocket launch (I think it was just a normal commercial rocket) something like 300+mi away, and cued the pilot as if it were an ICBM launch threat. I guess EOTS saw it? The situational awareness in the F-35 is beyond sci-fi level.
Exactly. I always giggle and ask why Israel decided to increase its F-35 fleet with a third squadron last year-before anyone had seen the Technology Refresh 3/Block 4 update (which is the minimum base for declaring it fully mission-capable here in Europe). It is not like the Israeli AF is void of experience of flying combat missions into S-300, 400 and 500 territory over the past 4 decades. Nobody can say that Israel has chosen this expansion (after flying combat) because it has no alternatives (It flies F-15, F-15 strike eagle, F-16 and has a bunch of F-15 EX on order. With that "pretty decent" combat fleet, I would think someone has discovered some usefulness in the "failed F-35" after all :-D
Agreed. Im still waiting for Capt. Pete Mitchell to get his hands on one of the f35 navy version. F35C should at least perform one of the following; 10Gs, communicating while flying inverted, and that pull up- enemy pass by you maneuver.
The F35 is a sexy badass plane.
If it hasn't reached it's full potential. It means that they haven't been lying about it. It's a pile of g.
@@EstorilEm *800mi away; it was a DAS test and it's still up on YT
I'm retired UASF, back in the late 70's and early 80's they called the F-16 the electric lawn dart, now it's the best 4th gen aircraft on the planet. Go figure!
I was on the fence about your content. This video really seals the deal for me to subscribe to your channel. You really did your homework on your videos especially this one. Your sponsor has really became a key tool that everyone else should be using. Cheers to you kind sir!
nobody cares
@@thomgizziz so why bother replying?
@@thebrownguy79 still don't care
It sealed for you his misinfo? that he spreads? LOL. "It's much easier to fool someone that to prove to him that he has been fooled." Mark Twain
I learned when I was kid that there is an attrition rate for all types of aircraft and of course the goal is to lessen this rate as much as possible, but some loss is deemed "acceptable". Unfortunately, the "media" still has the logic of a child.
You do children a disservice, Sir.
@chrisfox3161 Right, US media having any logic at all is laughable. Their "logic" is ass backwards
Once again you delivered superb analysis, rich in poignant data, smoothly articulated, leaving nothing absent from the product of your work.
Great piece Alex! I bet this one gets you even more of the recognition you deserve. You're the best.
Alex, you just explained why I turn a deaf ear to naysayers from MSM sources and turn to content creators such as yourself who deliver fair and balanced info. You provide opinions based on facts, which let's me to research for further info if desired...based on facts I get to make my own decisions, not based feelings or someone's bias.
Basically, GREAT JOB!!!
Thankyou, Alex. I've come to the point that my default reaction to negative headlines, is cynicism. The more negative, the more cynical.
I study history, so I know very well how badly people can behave and how horrible mistakes can be. Point is, the media is part of that badness.
When a Typhoon pilot won against an F35 pilot in a dog fight, he said that if the F35 had not been instructed to proceed to the dog fight without using his stealth, the Typhoon pilot would have lost hands down. In a dog fight the Typhoon is better, but that's not what the F35 is built for. If it fights to its strengths, it is unbeatable...
Losing to a Typhoon in a dogfight isn't necessarily a mark against the F-35. The Typhoon is an excellent dog fighter. What were the parameters of the fight. We like to put our pilots in compromising positions to make them work it out. It's like saying the F-22 is a bad dogfighter because a Rafale or A-10 have won fights against it.
The Typhoon is a dogfighter. The F-35 is a sniper.
@gordonbergslien30 bingo. Hence ideally the UK will pair them up. F35 goes ahead & uses its systems to seek & detect targets. These they'll pass onto the following Typhoons, they'll then hammer the targets with Meteor without ever needing to use their own sensors.
The alternative also works with 'Phoons finding targets at max range for the sneaky F35 to close & kill. Great combo.
Hmmm, developing, deploying, and supporting a state of the art, high performance, low observable, ultra high capability tactical aircraft is expensive, challenging, and time consuming. Who knew?
The same companies that make our planes, have been making our rockets, and they've been saying the exact same things about space rockets.
But SpaceX has shown that what they've been telling us is a lie.
And we're being lied to about the costs of these planes also. They're expensive because we let them get away with it.
Who knew? The F-22 program manager(s), among others (F-117?).
@@Egilhelmson I would bet you can include almost every program manager on that list, actually.
A lot of reporters writing on these matters of course have zero aviation, engineering, or defence expertise. When I heard the 50% availability number I thought ‘well that seems ok, not great, but not bad either’. When you hear reporters talk about submarines or naval assets it’s even worse. Often they have no idea about the operational cycle of the hulls (one in refit, one in working up, one on deployment). Plus you know, how they’re used in operations.
They're forced to report on matters that they hardly care about. That's part of why I detest journalism despite having the skill set for it. Journalism skill isn't enough, you actually have to be meticulous about your field and "nerd out about it" so to speak. So if you can't nerd out over fighter jets, don't report on them. Simple as.
@ yeah, I hate that they have degrees in journalism for decades now and that’s where most journalists come from. You should just get a degree in anything else and then become a journalist. At least then you’ve some expert training in something other than being a journalist.
Loved the intense edition of Sandbox News. Thank you.
RUclips is now shoehorning ads smack in the middle of “And THIS [30 sec ad] is AIR Power” curse you RUclips.. you’ve managed to steal my one brief moment of weekly joy
Mid-sentence ad inserts are the work of the devil.
Firefox + uBlock solves the problem
I use the FREE browser extension Adblock Plus and don't these ads. They try to push through at the beginning of RUclips videos. About a week or so back I started getting ads in the middle of videos. I went to Adblock Plus in settings and toggled it off, then toggled it back on. So now I am not getting ads in the middle!
OR, Vivaldi + uBlock (FYI...Vivaldi is the creation of the folks who _walked_ when Opera was bought by the ChiComs. It's Chrome with ALL the nasty bits yanked out.)
Use a blocker... smh
The US Army just chose General Dynamics and Rheinmetall as finalists for the 4000 Bradley replacement IFVs (well, a year ago).
Could you do a Firepower series video about this program, the two finalists and the other three that dropped out. Or more generally the current state of IFVs (Bradley, CV90, Puma, Lynx) and their most likely future. Maybe even including anti air IFVs like some CV90 variants and SkyRanger.
Good idea. Task and Purpose has a great video on the topic in the meantime
I was at Hill AFB for the "Thud out" back in the day. The F35 has a similar airframe look as the F105. The improvement in avionics, radar, and communications make this a legitimate platform.
Now it makes me remember a friend of mine who told stories about F-16 once being nicknamed Lawn Dart in the early days because of the crashes.
Hey Alex, if you haven’t seen LazerPig’s F35 video, it’s definitely worth watching.
LP is a NAFO shill. Not worth watching.
I didn't hear Sprey say anything in that video, only LazerPig saying "Sprey said this" or "Sprey said that" while trying to sound clever.
I'm Canadian and I've been griping for years that the F-35 sucks and can't fly in the rain and mad that we finally buckled and ordered it, but this video has turned me around on it, so thank you. The most compelling parts where the bits about scale of production compared to what, and the listing of first and most powerfuls. Great video!
i think Americans underestimate the impact of mis and disinformation
I think it's the opposite. They are experts at it. The tricky part is pretend like "he knows what he is talking about" while spewing a bunch of disinfo himself. That's the mastery skilled part. That is not achieved by anyone else in the world.
The F-35 program actually managed to deliver a powerful fighter that's never been shot down. Meanwhile the Zumwalt program delivered a destroyer with no gun.
Ironically if the zumwalt had been designed with no gun it might have been half decent.
It had a gun. A good gun in fact. They just didn't have ammo for it. Crazy how they messed that all up.
My criticism of the zeitgeist around Zumwalt….
It is actually a great ship.
It just had key design failures. (Actually based on early misevaluations of technology readiness levels )
Those should have been fixed and we should have moved forward with a revised Zumwalt.
Instead it is called a failure and all the good ideas and tech in the program are just thrown out because the proposed gun didn’t work out.
And so we have FLT III Arleigh Burke: a very good class… but it has literally no room or power for any upgrades.
I think we should have FLT II Zumwalt instead. That seems a much better investment in the future.
Well … here is hoping we don’t make the same mistakes with “DDG-X” and actually build test and revise that into a good system.
Yea, what is the idea 💡 for that ship? Looks almost fake or, that's what the news is making me say and think. I'm glad the guy with the robot vacuum doesn't talk about ship's. He gets all lathered up about the problems with the F-35. Said he's from Italy. Sounds further east to me. He is a bot.
That’s because the ship builder sabotaged the program.
Don't forget that readiness rates also include aircraft that are used for training and testing. Naturally, combat coded aircraft take priority and will have slightly better readiness rates, depending on how much test and training aircraft are skewing the numbers
Thank you for your deep dive into this. Unfortunately many Technical journalists are also not experts or even reasonably knowledgeable in the subjects they report on.
Ryan McBeth looked at the backgrounds of hundreds of New York Times reporters. Ones with medical backgrounds wrote medical stories, ones with legal backgrounds wrote legal stories, but none of the reporters that wrote military stories had military backgrounds. NONE.
I and some of my buddies in the DoD research/development community have had dealings with journalists (mostly local or second tier.) I can state with full confidence that none have understood the technology we were explaining to them
@@kennethzeringue2727 These journalists have degrees in journalism, not engineering. A good many of them would have trouble getting the facts straight about an automobile accident.
Dude you need to be a motivational speaker because that intro had me HYPE!!!!🕺🏾🕺🏾🕺🏾
Couldn't agree more, Alex would be an amazing motivational speaker. I wish he would podcast!
There is a lot of BS on the media but I tend to be able to sort to the chaff. You’re one of the few I trust.
...aaand thats precisely how you get misinformed. He literally repeated the same misinfo from the media, that he supposedly blames for misinfo. LOL
Obligatory “wow lazerpig nailed this 2 years ago” 🎉
Lazerpig: "The A-10 Warthog is useless"
Actual combat veterans: "The A-10 Warthog saved our lives"
Don't listen to that dingbat
@@MakerInMotion The A-10 is ONLY useful in a combat situation where the party has gained Air Superiority.
@@M16_Akula-III So pretty much any conflict the United States gets into. Pretty useful.
LP is a NAFO shill. Same peopel are listening to him.
@@MakerInMotion what lazerpig actually said was that “the a10 is not as good as you think” and he correctly notes something important: the best case circle of accuracy for the rotary cannon is a 30 foot radius. This makes it tough to use for close air support, unless you’re comfortable suffering losses to friendly fire. Incidentally, the A-10 is #1 in friendly fire incidents.
So *as he notes in his video* you’ll see a wide disparity between combat veterans who had an a10 strike a *nearby* position, vs combat veterans who had an a10 strike an *adjacent* position. I have literally heard this argument between two combat veterans so - I think he might be on to something. His thesis is more nuanced than “useless” - you might give the videos another watch. 🥃
Thanks Alex. For those of us that have maintained cutting edge Fighter aircraft (Tomcat) it is very easy to see the hyperbole, misinformation, and lies in the media every day. We even get it from our political leaders if it helps their narrative.
Keep up the good work.
And you didn't realize that he literally spewed misinfo himself. 👍👍
You gave me a whole new perspective on the F35. I'm ashamed of myself for how obvious your points are and yet I didn't think of them.
You believe this chuckle head over the testimony of the Air Force's General in charge of the program earlier this year? Well, unless of course you consider 29.3% of ALL F-35s being fully mission capable a respectable number for such a low cost, low impact platform. How about the fact that the engine defect that causes the fuel lines to rupture are still only mitigated and not fixed? Or do you think the US General is a secret KGB plant, put in place to make the US AF look bad by lying before congress? He last name is Schmidt. It's a public hearing before Congress, so anyone can go read the thing for themselves. Maybe you should try that for once, instead of believing the people that tell you things that make you FEEEEEL better.
Agility of the F35 may be it's most underrated feature. It has the control surface area of a fighter twice it's size. No other single engine modern fighter even has dual vertical stabilizers/rudders.
Fair point, though that might change once the T-7 gets a fighter variant.
That's a weird way to put it because there aren't many single engine crafts out there, most of them are dual engine. Though, I'm pretty sure that Yak130 has them. Depending on what you mean by "dual vertical rudders" ...may be I'm not understanding something, but there are rudders at the back of the Yak130.
@@korana6308 F-16 J-10 & gripen are all frontline single engined fighters. Vertical stabilizer is also know as the tail. It contains the rudder control surface which is important in a variety aerial maneuvers. Twin vertical stabilizers have greater control authority in high angle of attack maneuvers. Not only because of greater control surface area, but also because moving the vertical stabilizer off the centerline of the aircraft improves airflow. The yak-130 has a single vertical stabilizer & single rudder. Sometimes the vertical stabilizer also contains the speed brake but not a additional rudder.
@@alt5494 OK thanks.
"If it bleeds, it leads." was taught in journalism classes at university level in the early 1970s. I know. I was there. Changed my major from journalism to history.
You, too, huh?
Journalism majors talk down to PR students until senior year and they see what the income differential is.
Without doubt these are the best military analysis videos on RUclips
My brother in Christ, I haven't believed a word the mainstream media says in decades.
No, no…. the trick is to believe…. but to believe the exact OPPOSITE of what they say.
@@miamijules2149That’s how you become a delusional conspiracy theorist.
And yet on average, the mainstream media is about 10x more reliable & accurate than alternative sources.
Cuz you’re easily manipulated.
Or social media!!!
I know more about military aviation both past and present than anyone else I know. If I was going to war I would only want to go in the F-35. The F-22 would be a close 2nd.
Lol, sure...
@@persistentwind and you sure must be 1900 times smarter😂
@nikolaideianov5092 I don't pretend to be a pretentious prick. I am one.
@@nikolaideianov5092 I don't have to pretend to be a pretensious prick. I am one.
@nikolaideianov5092 I don't have to pretend to be pretentious, because I am.
I like the demonstration in the title that a "negative" word can be used to disseminate positive stories.
In a fistfight, would you rather have your son, in an F-35, SU-57, or a J-20? No need to comment; just answer the question in your own heart of hearts. I know where I would want my son.
Great video Alex, but since this is all about misinformation, i feel obliged to be *that* guy. At around 7:55, you mention that a 2.3% increase in click-through rate would more than double your effective click-through rate. This is absolutely not what the cited paper actually shows! The findings of the paper are reported as relative increases, not absolute. With a baseline click-through rate of 1%, your article will now have a click-through rate of 1.023%, not 3.3%! It's a very simple oversight, but you now inadvertently overstate the effect of negative headlines by several orders of magnitude. Sorry i have to be such a nitpick, but it's a very nice example of how easy it is to accidentally contribute to the proliferation of misinformation.
Anyways, as always a great video regardless, and please keep making the content you do!
Very good catch! I note that the guy didn't even acknowledge your point.
He was talking about media misinfo while literally repeating that said misinfo as a fact🤦♂🤦♂... /s
Thanks for the great updates and words for us viewers. Cheers from Australia
Great stuff. The general naivete about the military and operational issues is cause for worry, but the down right general ignorance of specifics of military programs is despiriting.
This former F-4/F-15 & F-16 crew chief salutes your good work.
Alex is American, and it is therefore logical for him to use USA figures in his videos. However, I think there's a different figure that might help put the sheer number of operational F-35s into perspective.
Russia has at most 25 Su-57s in service. That's if we accept the (sometimes rubbery) estimates of Russia's most ardent fans.
Right now, Australia - in theory, a country with a far smaller military than a former superpower like Russia - has 63 F-35s in service, with operational weapons and trained pilots, and with the remainder of the 72 fighters from our initial order soon to be delivered. In other words, a country that has never claimed superpower status has nearly three times the number of operational fifth-generation fighters Russia can field.
WRONG. You can't compare a single engine jet to a double engine one. Those are different classes of jets , and in case of the F35 it is a completely different aircraft, class and a role - it's a bomber... and the F22, J20 (Russian MiG 144), and the Su 57, are all air dominance ( air superiority) aircrafts. Different roles COMPLETELY.
Nothing even comes close to the Russian Su57M it is the best 5th gen jet by a long shot.
@@korana6308 HAHAHA. It took a minute and seeing your other posts to make sure this is a bot response.
Laughable comparison.
No one even pretends to understand modern missiles and why the F35 is designed the way it is.
@@sparksmcgee6641 " what's so laughable". Just because you've been fed a certain narrative, doesn't mean that the truth is actually laughable. LOL
@@korana6308 Yet it hasn't achieved air superiority over Ukraine ???
The single / twin engine argument is becoming a rather mute one, just like the 4-engine airliner is also going extinct
The twin might make it back home if damage isn't too bad, sure, but it also increases size, cost, maintenance, fuel burn, .... and failure rates (much like ETOPS has shown)
@@Wannes_ what hasn't achieved air superiority? Russia is dominating the air in the most hostile region on earth right now.
2 engine aircrafts are literally the future. Every single fighter jet of the future has 2 engines, like NGAD, or the navy version one, or KAAN, or "mig 41" etc. The only exception is the Su75 which is a F35 competitor in it's role. There are no other competitors in that role, just the F35 and the Su75.
I love the way you present your work! You can hear the passion in your voice! I have followed you for a long time and love every story! Keep it up brother!
The problem is the public listens to media who don’t even know which bathroom to use, about the cutting edge of military and aerospace design and implementation. Clowns. Not talking about you Alex. You do an exemplary job ❤
I am just a dumb civilian. I know the shortcomings of the A-10, but my lizard brain says "the big gun on the A-10 goes BRRRRT so it must be better.".
Hence why we aren't making the decisions. I too think "ooh big gun brrrrrt hehe cool let's keep using it" despite knowing the many issues with the jet.
You go ahead and stay under whatever rock your lizard brain has you crawl under.
If you like the A-10, go watch some AC-130 videos. It not only has a 30mm cannon, but also a 105mm cannon! That 105 is basically a cold-war-era tank gun mounted to fire out the side of a plane! They have also figured out how to mount missile racks for Hellfires or small-diameter bombs on it, and come up with a different setup to fire missiles out of the rear cargo door as well. It also has a radar, which helps when operating in poor visibility. It can't carry the larger bombs that the A-10 can, but I think trading that capability for a 105mm cannon is pretty fair.
@@sadlerbw9 The ol' gunship is certified badass
@sadlerbw9 , good luck flying an AC-130 in contested airspace. I love its weapons, too, and had Spectre fly in support of a training mission, but it's a big, slow target above any threat armed with more than small arms and AAA, and maybe not even the second.
36:24 BRILLIANT WRITING! Bravo! Bravo! 🎉❤
Israel named it the Adir..."The Mighty One"
6:05 The V-22 is right up there too. Guarantee the V-280 will get the same negative coverage to sell views and clicks. Fortunately, you made a video when the V-280 won and I just point everyone to that video to dispel some common misconceptions. Now I have a video to share on how the F-35's negative reputation continues to persist and how it can be applied to other aircraft being reported in the news.
I recently read that the latest Osprey crash was due to the crew ignoring three magnetic particle detector warnings. The gearbox was fighting for dear life and the pilot could have saved it by diverting and landing after the second warning.
@@ChucksSEADnDEAD I read something like that, but I don't recall what I read had put all the blame on the pilots. The chip detector warnings, by itself, aren't 100% useful for a pilot to figure out what is wrong or how soon they need to land.
thank you for alleviating some of my misconceptions about the F35
Check how media coverage was on the F-15, F-16, etc. it was pretty similar. I think the F-35 could have been done way better (a vertical landing variant was honestly pretty silly, and made the entire platform way more expensive than it should have been…) but overall it is still very impressive, both in terms of price and capability.
Really awesome video 😊
tbf the f-35 was being made for both the navy and air force. and it was also designed from the beginning to be export-capable and highly adaptable to whatever the buying country needs.
adding stovl support was probably only a minor cost driver, since 99% of costs associated with that would've been for the physical frame and just the design of the vertical landing fans.
The simple fact is that media does not understand the complexities of fighter development and the F-35 is not a rare case
Sukhoi was given the contract for the PAK FA in 2002 which become the Su-57 yet its 2024 and there barely 32 Su-57 due the massive delays with the project
Chengdu built the J-20 as outgrowth of the JXX program. There are 300 built however in the 13 years its flown, its gone through over 5 engine changes
as China continues to struggle with developing reliable engines for it aircraft. Also realize that China deleted the gun from the J-20 which cut development and design time
Now note that with the Russian and Chinese programs, the sole users were just RuAF and PLAAF while the F-35 is built to meet the requirements of the export market
Simple facts like this , the media glosses over
j20 is doing great with production
@@Nas12223Yes, but China rushed it into service and is still ironing out the kinks, which are much more numerous and serious than the F-35’s.
The media as a whole usually doesn’t understand the complexities of ANYTHING.
There's not 32 probably only 10 that even fly! & they just cancelled production so it doesn't even count as a real active service jet?! 🤷🏻♀️
@@3373just
Thats point, the F-35 problems are not unique. Russia is struggling to get the Su-57 fully operational
My only issue with the F-35 is the cost per flight hour and the fact that they took what was originally cast as a low-cost, COTS-leveraging aircraft and made it the most expensive aircraft ever.
A video about the X65 and active flow control would be cool.
There is one, and it wasn't that impressive. Not nearly so as RDE tech or missile propellants doubling their ranges over the last 5 years.
There are also RUclips video channels that do the same thing to attract viewers. It's Clickbait.
This was a really good spent time. Thank you❤
For a program that's supposed to go for several more decades, it's a bit early to be calling it a success or a failure, let alone the best or the worst.
Not when you tack the qualifier "so far" on the end.
For a program that officially began production in 2006 it's a bit late to call it new and just having some teething issues.
I meant not really as it will last decades and has already been the most produced Stealth Fighter in history so it’s not really a failure or failing rn and it’s about to hit a decade in 2025 its more so to dispel the misinformation that it is a failure and won’t be good when it’s leaning heavily towards success and shows it by countries wanting it and not having problems with it rn and it’s edge vs the enemy I guess we have to wait till it’s 15-20th year in service for it to be known as a powerful and successful aircraft which I know it will be same with the F-22 F-15EX like the F-16 F-18 F-15 has shown
You can do it intermittently though. And so far it has been mostly a f. , something which he hasn't said or talked about is that everyone is waiting for the TR4 upgrade and nobody really wants buying it at TR3 now LOL. Moreover it's cost is projected to cost close to 1 billion PER AICRAFT over it's lifetime. That's including everything - maintenance, upgrades and fuel. It's THE MOST expensive fighter jet aircraft in history, and the worst part is, is that it's just a bomber - i. e. a bomb/rocket vessel.
@@korana6308 Those projections are for up to six decades with the back end having the most .
Whenever I hear about the projected total program cost without mentioning that it's for over half a century, I don't find them very credible.
Video starts at 4:38
Very compelling commentary, kudos. This channel will go long and far
Sorry, RU & CN are Gen 4.5 as they can't do Super Cruise.... and, CN lacks the metalurgy for their hot section to operate at combat ready duty cycle. again, NOT Gen 5.
Well I'm not and expert but I did learn how to read and judge the truth and learn when someone lying to me. First the Russians s 57 wouldn't stand a chance against the f 35 well it would target the s 57 first which mean first kill. Let's say one f 35 and four s 57s who would win now their are Sam batteries on the ground. Now the f 35 can tell these batteries to target all of the s 57s and they become junk in minutes.
*su-57
Then why are they so afraid to send it to U. LOOL sending in the F16 instead of the F35s 😂😂
Precisely because they know they would lose not just to the Su57 but even the Su35 LOL.
@@korana6308Прекратите пропаганду. Вам никто не верит.
My dude. My attention span doesn't often get me clicking on longer-format videos, but this one is damned-fine. I appreciate the heavy emphasis on media positivity/negativity issues and propaganda. Solid work right here.
NO. I'm Alex Hollings!
NO! I'm Alex Hollings!
NO! I'm Alex Hollings, and so is my wife!
Me: …
Thanos: …
Me: I … am … Alex Hollings
Thanos:😮
@@gregmita Don't make me picture... aww dam, I did.
I need a drink.
russia has stopped making the SU 57 because of sanctions. one success story for sanctions.
LOL. 😂 It's the exact opposite. It's producing better planes (57M) in much larger numbers.
@@korana6308Then where are they?
@@darth_nihilus_ Where what? Full series production this year ( 2025 which had started this year in 2024), for the first time in history, full series production of those planes. Before that it was a small pre/initial production series. All this done whilst under the highest amount of sanctions of any country in history. The w. can't even do anything just like the Austrain painter or the Napoleon couldn't... even though they had the strongest armies of their time... Always sending the best and attacking with the best might in the world towards Russia and failing miserably each time. LOL.
That's false. You don't know what you are saying.
Always such excellent content Alex, you have a great team and a great heart!
Thanks for covering this. Foreign media manipulation is especially important to understand right now during the current U.S. election cycle.
So US Air Force General Schmidt's testimony before Congress was a foreign disinformation campaign? Only 29.3% of all F-35s being fully mission capable is a pretty low number. Upgrade TR-3 being truncated doesn't sound all that great. And Block IV upgrades being put on hold and now being transferred to their own sub-procurement project is not a good thing, but at least they solved the little problem of the fuel lines being ruptured by the engines harmonics. Oh, no, they didn't. Just a mitigation. Those fuel lines will still rupture, so either complete engine replacements for all current F-35s or..... Public hearings are public record, available for all of the public to read over on the House's Committee of Armed Services website, you should try reading what is actually said instead of what a clown's RUclips channel tells you.
@@LackofFaithify "It's easier to fool someone than to prove to them that they've been fooled." Mark Twain.
AlexH just sounds confident. And that is ALL that is needed to convince anyone that they are speaking the truth lol. You just need to sound convincing. Nobody is going to be bothered to check anything, they would just believe you like they believed AlexH. LOOL
The pessimism in the US about our own military systems and equipment while exaggerating the capabilities of rival nations is borderline treasonous. Its actually getting beyond ridiculous.
Yep, it is truly treasonous to want to know why the Navy spent so much money on useless bath tub toys, even when it became apparent that they would be useless and yet continued to build them anyway. Or why an off the shelf frigate build that should take 3 years (the time they have been built in other countries) will now take 9. It is treason to call out the Air Forces laundry list of billion dollar, cancelled hypersonic missile systems with nothing but a bill to show for them. It is abject treason to question the state of the army's new not a tank vehicle who's entire design was based around being able to fit 2 into a Globemaster, when at most, using every available Globemaster in the inventory, would be about 200 pieces of armor being delivered to a well developed runway. These are all treason, and having to think is hard.
Yeah, it's starting to get quite frustrating. Though this is an issue across much of western media, because they are able to report without much fear of being suppressed, they are free to publish whatever stories they like and what will be more profitable.
Here's two headlines and you tell me which one is likely to garner the most viewers:
America's F-35: The Latest and Greatest Fighter, Warts and All
America's F-35: Faces Cost Overrun in the Face of Rising Adversary Air Forces
Both are accurate but one is clearly more skewed to making readers feel more negative.
It stems from kids (K to college) being taught that the US is "evil" and by extension everything we make is "bad." When you have teachers openly claiming to be communist, you can bet the kids have a certain point of view when it comes to US equipment.
@@LackofFaithify It's treason to lie and exaggerate for no good reason, which is what you are doing here. Show your sources. RT and CCTV don't count.
We used to hang traitors for damaging morale and sowing discourse. Now you are allowed to say whatever you like without evidence or proof.
Its the way the system has worked since the early Cold War.
Step 1: Enemy System declared far superior to anything in existence (so says Enemy)
Step 2: Media takes Enemy's word as gospel, forecasts doom because of inferiority.
Step 3: Military is tasked with creating a counter-system, that is on paper superior to the Enemy equivalent (and in reality, is even better than it is on paper)
Step 4: Learn that Enemy system was overhyped in about 10 different ways.
Step 5: Media questions why so much money was spent on such a ridiculously capable system.
Step 6: Repeat the cycle.
The cycle is extremely beneficial to the contractors who build the latest and greatest western equipment. Not sure who else comes out ahead in the game though.
Wow! Great commentary! Keep up the great work!
So is this what USA and nato have also been doing regarding the SU-57, T-14, J-20 etc? Or are they always truthful?
Nobody bats an eye lol. Saying in 1 sentence that w. media was lying to them, and in the next sentence repeating the w. media narratives LOL is PEAK AMERICAN.
Well, since that idiot Pierre Sprey is dead, a lot of the stupid coverage has died down (no pun intended). He was prancing around saying he designed this and he did that, and Sprey NEVER designed NOT ONE DAMN THING in Aviation. NOTHING. He never collaborated, was asked to participate, etc in ANY design, test, flight, or engineering work on any airframe. What he did was low-level statistical analysis. That's IT. He waited til Boyd and the other guys who worked alongside him died, then began embellishing what he did, and then just flat-out started lying. He was an idiot of the worst sort, and I am glad he is not around to spread his lies.
Thank you for letting us look behind the curtain…!
You have given us a glimpse of the great deapth and truly amazing capabilities of the F35!
You put a lot of life time knowledge into sharing this amazing and impressive engineering marvel.
Saying thank you seems so shallow….
just jim