The F-35 is on its death spiral too many can not do. Can't Climb , can't turn ,too little armament, too fragile....
John McCain will be chairman of the armed services commitee in January. He stated that the f-35 is the most embarassing thing the US has put forth. He's gonna push to cancel it. In a press release in defense aerospace the Dutch parliament calculates that the hourly operating cos is $44,000 per hour the Hornet costs 10.000 per hour. You have to have Logheed techies to work on them. They are only useful two missions a day. The Navy F-18 run 8 per day. The Canadian requirement for Dual engines (flameouts and bird strikes The Hornets had 205 of the them, wait we never had that many planes to begin with, we would have run out in 1996 ) Short runways the f-35 needs lots of runway the Hornet lands fine without droges, The f-35 has a tendency to have fuselage cracks probably because it already overweight and you can't have stealth and strenght. Now this funny ,naw not really, those northern runways are rough icy shaking your bones as you land. The carrier F-18 was chosen back in the 80 was because they are structurally so tough they withstand thousands of carrier landing. check out youtube f-18 carrier landing. There are only two planes designed for a carrier The Super Hornet and the Rafale. GUESS WHAT VERSION OF F35 LOGHEED QUOTED US , YES THE F_35 A a conventional landing and take off we will have to base them at our International airports , Go up north, no way can't land on a short runway, too rough, my landing gear will colapse, crack my fuselage.
Pentagon puts an A model F-35 at $185 million the vsol B at about 220 million and the C at 256 million. You can buy a F-18 E/F Superhornet for about 60 million ,or buy the just released ADvance for about 80 million. You can also buy a Rafale at about 146 million which is another overpriced monster. WHAT WAS OUR DEFENSE DEPARTMENT THINKING WHEN THEY OKAYED AN A MODEL . YOU WANT TO MURDER OUR PILOTS.