RAAF vs F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter

Last Updated: Sun Mar 27 05:26:11 UTC 2016

Joint Strike Fighter

In 2002, in a surprise decision, the then Defence Minister announced that the planned AIR 6000 flyoff to choose Australia's future fighter aircraft was to be effectively stopped, with the developmental Joint Strike Fighter declared to be the preferred aircraft type.

The Joint Strike Fighter is not designed to perform air superiority roles, unlike the larger F-22A, and is not well adapted to performing the penetrating long range strike role filled by the F-111 until 2010.

There has been considerable adverse press associated with JSF cost overruns, project delays, and other difficulties observed in this program.

The JSF Program and resulting aircraft designs have, since the very first days of the program, been burdened by fatal optimism, a total indifference to what is real, placement of form over substance, the acquisition malpractice of concurrency and the fact that the STOVL F-35B is the baseline for all three variants, having dictated and constrained most if not all key aircraft parameters in the definition and resulting design of the other two JSF variants.

The F-35 JSF aircraft designs will not meet specification nor the operational requirements laid down in the JSF JORD (Joint Operational Requirements Document) by significant degrees, noting that these operational requirements and resulting specifications, themselves, were predicated on the capabilities of reference threats from an era past and subsequently subjected to the illogical and deeply flawed process known as CAIV (Cost As an Independent Variable).

The designs of all three JSF variants are presenting with critical single points of failure while even the most basic elements of aircraft design (e.g. weight, volume, aerodynamics, structures, thermal management, electrical power, etc.) will almost certainly end up in what Engineers call "Coffin Corner".

In essence, the unethical Thana Marketing strategy used to sell the JSF, along with the acquisition malpractice of concurrency in not only development, production and testing but the actual designs of the JSF variants, themselves, have resulted in the JSF marketeers writing cheques that the aircraft designs and JSF Program cannot honour.

A more detailed summary of these points is available in Hansard, Parliamentary Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, 07/02/2012, Inquiry into the Department of Defence annual report 2010-11 and associated Submissions by Air Power Australia. Further technical discussion can be found in the OSD DOT&E FY2012 Annual Report.

This website indexes a selection of relevant articles, submissions and papers.

New - Canberra Senate Inquiry into F-35 Dec 2015 - Jun 2016

Senate Standing Committees on Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade
Submissions to Inquiry into the planned acquisition of the F-35 Lightning II (Joint Strike Fighter)
[Additional Documents]

First distributed publicly in December, 2011.

Is the JSF Really a Fifth Generation Fighter?
Modern Fighters					Current Threat
5^th Generation Fighter Capabilities	F-22A Raptor	T-50 PAK-FA	Chengdu J-20	F-35A JSF Lightning II	Gen 4++ Su-35S
5^th Generation Fighter Capabilities	USA	Russia	China	International	Russia
Super Cruise	Yes > 1.7 Mach (0)	Yes, ~1.8 Mach with persistence (0)	Yes (0)	No (-1)	Yes (0)
High Agility Supersonic / Subsonic	Yes (0)	Extreme Plus (+1)	Yes (0)	Neither (-1)	Extreme (+1)
High Specific Excess Power - P_s	Yes (0)	Yes (0)	Yes (0)	No (-1)	Yes (0)
Thrust Vectoring Control - TVC 2-D	Yes 2-D (0)	Yes 3-D (+1)	Accommodated 3-D (0)	No (-1)	Yes 3-D (+1)
Highly Integrated Avionics	Yes (0)	Yes (0)	Yes (0)	Yes (0)	Yes (0)
Electronically Steered Array (ESA) Radar	High Power Aperture (+1)	High Power Aperture (+1)	Yes (0)	Medium Power Aperture (0)	High Power Aperture (+1)
Sidelooking ESA Apertures	Fitted For But Not With (FFBNW) (0)	Yes (+1)	Insufficient Data	No (-1)	Yes (0)
High Situational Awareness (SA) - Onboard/Offboard	Yes (0)	Yes (0)	Likely	Yes (0)	Yes (0)
Supersonic Weapons Delivery	Yes (0)	Yes (0)	Yes (0)	No (Bomber Doors / Toed-In Carriage) (-1)	Yes (0)
Large Thrust to Weight Multi-Engine Thrust Growth	Yes 2 Engines Large Growth (0)	Yes 2 Engines Large Growth (0)	Yes 2 Engines Large Growth (0)	Middling T/W One Engine Little Growth (-1)	Yes 2 Engines Large Growth (0)
High Combat Ceiling Loiter / Operate (plus > 7 deg/sec turn rate, sustained @ 30 kft)	Yes > 55 kft Yes (0)	Yes > 60 kft Yes (0)	Yes > 50 kft Yes (0)	No < 45 kft No (-1)	Yes > 55 kft Yes (0)
Very Low Observable RF Stealth / Low Observables	All Aspect Wideband (+1)	Yes or Partial (0)	Yes or Partial (0)	Yes but Partial (0)	Not Intended (-1)
Good Non RF Observables	Yes (0)	Yes (0)	Yes (0)	No VOVS/WVE (-1)	Not Intended (-1)
Large Internal Usable Fuel Load (klbs)	Yes >18 klbs PLUS thermal cooling fuel load ~2,000 lbs (0)	Yes, ~22 klbs includes fuel for thermal cooling (0)	Yes, ~25 klbs includes fuel for thermal cooling (+1)	No, <18 klbs MINUS fuel for thermal cooling (-1)	Yes >23 klbs (+1)
Internal Weapon Carriage Hard Point Stations	Yes 6 + 2 (0)	Yes 6+2 (0)	Yes 6 + 2 (0)	Yes 4 (0)	Partial (Tunnel Pod) 2 - 4 (-1)
ZOCT Scoring by 5^th Gen Metrics	+2	+4	+1	-10	+1
Table © 2009 - 2013, Peter Goon, Air Power Australia, Peter Goon & Associates. Update Source Documents: Initial release table 8th November, 2009: http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-NOTAM-081109-1.html T-50 PAK-FA Update Sources: http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-2010-01.html; http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-2012-03.html J-20 Update Sources: http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-J-XX-Prototype.html; http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-2011-03.html F-35 Update Sources: http://www.jsf.mil/gallery/gal_photo_sdd.htm;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/98RS02776/abstract; http://www.wakenet3-europe.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/2nd_workshop/presentations/020-Barbaresco.pdf;http://www.jsf.mil/

First published in Submission #26, p5, Inquiry into the Defence Annual Report 2010-2011, Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Parliament House, Canberra, 2012; Updated with data from FY2012 DOT&E Annual Report (OSD).

First published in Submission #2, p15, Inquiry into the Defence Annual Report 2010-2011, Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Parliament House, Canberra, 2012.

	#1 - Joint Strike Fighter Affordability Failure The JSF program sets new benchmarks for exceeding initially intended Unit Procurement Costs in a weapon system being developed. These publications detail the scope, scale and nature of the program's failure in this area.
	Is the JSF Affordable? An Australian’s Perspective
	F-35 JSF Program: When is “Affordability” Not?


	#2 - Joint Strike Fighter Survivability and Lethality Failure The JSF program is almost unique historically in the extent to which its intended survivability and lethality are mismatched against the operational environment in which the aircraft is intended to be used. These publications detail the scope, scale and nature of the program's failures in these areas.
	Assessing Joint Strike Fighter Defence Penetration Capabilities
	Assessing Joint Strike Fighter Air Combat Capabilities
	How? The Deadly Question for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter
	Fast Forward ‘Fast Transients’: John Boyd, the F-22 and F-35 in 2016
	Why the F-22 and the PAK-FA have the “Right Stuff” and why the F/A-18 and the F-35 do not
	PAK-FA, F-35, F-22 and “Capability Surprise”
	Coffin Corners for the Joint Strike Fighter
	Why F-22A Raptor instead of F-35A Joint Strike Fighter?
	F-35 Joint Strike Fighter vs Russia's New Airborne Counter-Stealth Radars
	F-35 JSF: Cold War Anachronism Without a Mission
	Lockheed-Martin F-35 Lightning II - Assessing the Joint Strike Fighter
	JSF = Thunderchief II?
	Is the JSF really good enough?
	F/A-22As, JSFs and 21st Century air combat
	JSF F-35 Program: How Many Miles Does an F-35A Go On a Tankful of Gas?
	Air Combat: Russia’s PAK-FA versus the F-22 and F-35
	Sukhoi's Lightning Strikes the F-35 JSF
	F-35 JSF: Can It Meet Canada's Needs?
	United Kingdom: F-35 or F-22?
	Is the Joint Strike Fighter Right for Australia? Pt.1 / Pt.2
	The Joint Strike Fighter Decision
	Hedging the Bet- JSF for the RAAF?
	L ockheed-Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter - Part 1 - A Cold War Anachronism?
	L ockheed-Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter - Part 2 - Sizing up the Joint Strike Fighter
	Replacing the RAAF F/A-18 Hornet Fighter, Strategic, Operational and Technical Issues


	#3 - Joint Strike Fighter Governance Failure The JSF program introduced an unprecedented governance scheme in which the customer became a defacto marketing entity acting on behalf of the supplier, and in which concurrent development and production were planned for. These publications detail the scope, scale and nature of the program's failure in this area.
	JSF Top Level Programmatic Risk Assessment / Issue 7.2 16 July 2010
	F-35A JSF: Not Even Second Place...
	F-35 JSF: The Gamekeeper vs the Poachers .... JET Mk.II Juxtaposition and the 'Normalisation of Deviance'
	F-35 JSF Program: Assessment of Top Level Programmatic Risks
	F-35 JSF: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Do No Good
	F-35 JSF and the SecDef's Nightmare
	F-35 JSF: Becoming Your Own Peer Threat . . .While Killing Off the “Best Bang for the Buck” Option - the F-22A Raptor
	Mr Secretary - Why Does the Pentagon Say the JSF is a 5th Generation Fighter . . Really?
	F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program: Collapse is a “When” Question, not an “If” Question
	JSF, F-22, C-17 and the Hon Robert Gates: “Next war-itis” – Yet another dose of ‘alternate reality’
	Accountability vs Indifference to What is Real
	JSF: Through the Prism of Risk Management
	JSF: Dr Kopp Responds to Maj Gen Davis
	JSF: WGCDR Mills Responds to Maj Gen Davis
	JSF Alternate Realities: … and from whence they come


	#4 - Joint Strike Fighter Operational Supportability Failure The JSF program has produced a design which will be unusually challenging to operate in established operational environments, requiring unprecedented changes to the operating environment rather than design. These publications detail the scope, scale and nature of the program's failure in this area.
	F-35 SAR 31 Dec 09 Document: Request for Clarification No 002
	F-35 Operating and Support Cost / December 31, 2009 SAR