Accession Number : ADA602171

Title :   The Comanche and the Albatross: About Our Neck Was Hung

Descriptive Note : Journal article

Corporate Author : AIR UNIV MAXWELL AFB AL AIR FORCE RESEARCH INST

Personal Author(s) : Pietrucha, Michael W

PDF Url : ADA602171

Report Date : Jun 2014

Pagination or Media Count : 25

Abstract : The Air Force intended eventually to replace much of the post- Vietnam fighter fleet with the F-35A. This stealthy aircraft possessed advanced technology and was no more expensive than the aircraft it was designed to supplant. The Air Force sought to buy 1,763 F-35As the number required to replace every F-16, A-10, and F-117 in service in 2001. Envisioned after the resounding success of the F-117 in the Gulf War, the program placed high emphasis on the utility of low radar observability. Designed to provide combat aircraft for the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps as well as a host of allies worldwide, the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) would usher in a revolutionary improvement in American airpower. Instead, the program has been troubled, characterized by the Pentagon s acquisition chief as acquisition malpractice, and finds itself well behind schedule and over budget.1 Rather than an affordable, capable fighter aircraft, operational in large numbers by 2015, the F-35 continues to arrive late and cost more than anticipated. Program delays, unmet performance requirements, and spiraling costs have recently run full tilt into an austere budgetary environment dictated by the Budget Control Act of 2011. More significantly, the program emerged from decades of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) centric Cold War experience; furthermore, the Air Force did not envision it either for the Pacific theater or for an adversary with China s air defense capabilities. In this light and despite more than a decade of development invested in the program, budgetary realities should serve as an impetus to reexamine the Air Force s participation in the F-35 program and the future of the fighter force.

Descriptors :   *AIR FORCE BUDGETS, *JET FIGHTERS, AIR DEFENSE, AIR FORCE, AIRCRAFT, COMBAT FORCES, COSTS, FIGHTER AIRCRAFT, JOINT MILITARY ACTIVITIES, MARINE CORPS, MILITARY AIRCRAFT, NATO, NAVY, OPERATIONAL READINESS, REPRINTS, STRIKE WARFARE, WARFARE

Subject Categories : Aircraft
      Economics and Cost Analysis

Distribution Statement : APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE