A very intense in-depth review and analysis that definitely caught my attention after reading too many fluff pieces and too many cyncial blow offs.
What do my aviation and military friends here think? Strikes me that starting to dump F-16s to Ukraine and others makes a lot of sense if the “Block 4” advances, with prospects for Block 5 tech backward revisions to earlier models, are for real.
david fb
I don’t have time, at the moment, to watch that entire 50 minute piece. What I picked up very quickly:
1: the upgrades are secret, as he says, so he is speculating.
2: he claims the block 4 upgrade will make the plane, finally, up to meeting the original spec, which was written over 20 years ago, meaning it is now obsolete.
3: he is assuming Lockheed will deliver as promised, which they have failed to do, by his own admission, for over 20 years.
Then there is the engine. The Pratt engine was not performing as needed, so the requirements were reduced to what Pratt could deliver. So, the engines are being run harder than they like, resulting in shorter than projected engine life, and higher than projected maintenance costs.
Steve
I do not know what to trust. I can imagine how many cat-and-mouse spy games go on with this. We could be pumping out tonnes of false data. Yet note there are 900 planes produced so far. Countries do not even feel they need to spend money on updates.
This is not as simple as a video blogger makes it.
The ejection from and disappearance of an F35 over South Carolina is stunning proof of something or other bizarrely not quite right with this program.
Wrong kind of stealth…
david fb
There’s a lot wrong with that program … and all the other programs. The main thing wrong is that the primary goal of all programs is to earn money for the contractors and provide jobs for the higher ups when they retire from government or military. The secondary (hopefully) goal is to provide a good military device. It should be the other way around.
If the device (plane in this case) were designed for consumers, it would, of course, have a feature that it would attempt to auto-pilot a landing after ejection. And if not possible, simply fly in circles over a safe area until it runs out of fuel. Of course, there are technicalities, like “if in training, land it. If not training, in friendly area land it, in enemy area, self-destruct”. All quite doable with current tech.
Brilliant —> If the device (plane in this case) were designed for consumers, it would, of course, have a feature that it would attempt to auto-pilot a landing after ejection. And if not possible, simply fly in circles over a safe area until it runs out of fuel. Of course, there are technicalities, like “if in training, land it. If not training, in friendly area land it, in enemy area, self-destruct”. All quite doable with current tech.
WTH