Edited by: TJVNews.com
Seems like a much needed upgrade to the United States Air Force fleet of aging F-16 planes is in the initial planning stages.
According to a recent announcement made by Air Force Chief of Staff General Charles Brown, a new multi-use fighter jet to replace the Cold War era stealth fighter F-16 fleet is a necessity. He stressed that the new jet would not feature the same high-price tag and technological prowess of the F-35, according to a report on the trtworld.com web site.
The result would be a high-low mix of expensive “fifth-generation” F-22s and F-35s and inexpensive “fifth-generation-minus” jets, explained Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Brown Jr, as was reported by Forbes.
This announcement came as a surprise to defense analysts, given that the F-35 was pegged as the modern fifth-generation aircraft that would replace the F-16, as was reported by trtworld.com. In 2040, the F-16s will reach their 60th birthday.
Trtworld.com reported that nearly twenty years ago, the USAF set out to develop a replacement to the F-16’s successor, but the program only continued to grow prohibitively expensive as more cutting edge technology was poured into it during the research and development phase. When it grew too expensive, other nations were brought in as partners to offset the runaway costs.
Forbes reported that the Air Force and lead contractor Lockheed Martin packed the jet with more and more new technology.
Running the F-35 for 66 years is expected to cost $1.182 trillion, on top of its already hefty development cost of $397.8 billion, as was reported by trtworld.com. The F-35 costs slightly less than $100 million per plane.
Speaking to Forbes, Dan Ward, a former Air Force program manager and the author of popular business books including The Simplicity Cycle said, “The F-35 is not a low-cost, lightweight fighter.”
The F-35 is a Ferrari, Brown told reporters last Wednesday. “You don’t drive your Ferrari to work every day, you only drive it on Sundays. This is our ‘high end’ fighter, we want to make sure we don’t use it all for the low-end fight.”
“I want to moderate how much we’re using those aircraft,” Brown said.
In spite of its advanced technology and cutting-edge capabilities, the latest stealth fighter suffers from structural flaws and slew of challenges, as was reported by trtworld.com.
The F-35’s engine problem is partly based in not being able to deliver them for maintenance as fast as needed, in addition to a problem with the heat coating on its rotor blades which shortens engine lifespan considerably, as was reported by trtworld.com
Defense News reported that Lockheed Martin is pitching the Defense Department on a performance-based logistics contract for the F-35 joint strike fighter that company officials say will help improve the availability of spare parts and accelerate repair times.
The new proposal, which would run from 2022 to 2026, is a scaled down version of the more expansive proposal Lockheed floated in 2019. As such, the Pentagon likely won’t be able to rake in the $1 billion of savings that the company projected with the original offer, said Ken Merchant, the company’s vice president for F-35 sustainment. Instead, Lockheed Martin worked to shrink the scope of the contract “to something that the customers were comfortable with,” he told reporters Tuesday.
“With the new, reduced scope, we have not completely run all the models yet. We’re still working through the performance work statement and contract structure with the customer. Until we have that done, we can’t get the cost savings piece of it laid out,” he said. “I don’t suspect it will be anywhere near what we had hoped for before. But we will see performance improvements along lines of what we had hoped for previously.” (Forbes, trtworld.com & Defense News)