When you’ve got search-strings in place for F-35 news, you can’t avoid the chest thumping regarding Israel’s F-35 and their proven effectiveness.
They are pretty good at hauling bombs over Gaza, and dropping them on undefended buildings. Their state-of-the-art stealth and all the fancy touch panels and virtual reality helmets are, actually, useless. When you’re flying over and dropping bombs on undefended airspace, with civilian buildings and infrastructure being your primary target, you could probably fly the worst aircraft, ever (I’m not sure what that is…?) and still be “successful.” It’s like Mike Tyson being successful against PeeWee Herman, in a friendly boxing match: it might look fascinating on Herman’s resume but not so interesting on Iron Mike’s.
But, presumably in order to counter the many nay-sayers who criticize the aircraft as an over wing-loaded hangar queen, people with F-35s will go out of their way to make sure everyone knows that they actually got some use out of the damn thing. Remember: this is undefended airspace – big whoop.
There are many firsts involving the Jewish state and the F-35 Lightning II fifth-generation fighter aircraft. Israel is the first buyer outside the fighter jet’s nine-nation co-development group. While the deal was signed with the US in 2010, Israel received the aircraft between 2015 and 2017.
These would have been the ever-popular “it buys itself” model: the US gives Israel a bunch of money that is earmarked for F-35s, then Israel hms and haws and announces it has decided to buy F-35s. Then, the planes are delivered late and not meeting spec, but who cares about a thing like that?
This variant reportedly packs a lot more features than the American jets. They can be externally modified by the Israeli Air Force, part of which includes conformal fuel tanks that greatly plugs the aircraft’s much-needed capability gap of having a short-range.
Combined with drop tanks, an aircraft’s range can be significantly increased as has been done with most of their F-16 and F-15 fleet.
According to defense analyst Tyler Rogoway, a combat aircraft’s range is a huge deal for any nation, but for Israel, whose primary enemy remains Iran, it is a grave concern. Targets in that country can reach 1,700 miles from Israeli borders.
I discussed that back in 2016 [stderr] shortly after I started this blog: in military applications, range is either mostly a problem of logistics, or it’s the thing that kills you. Most of the time, it’s just logistics. For example, the Israeli F-35s can do their thing without having to worry about midair tanking or hauling drop tanks, because they’re flying in undefended airspace.
That’s an F-35 in “gimp mode” i.e.: it has buckets of rocks bolted underneath it, so it’s much slower, turns even worse, and has no stealth at all. In that configuration, it’s either perfectly safe because: undefended airspace, or it’s a sitting duck. What an amazing piece of military technology! Remember when it was supposed to “supercruise up to 2,000 miles? Yeah, it struggles to break the speed of sound and it has something like a 750 mile range without the strap-on vibrators (which increase the range and also decrease it).
“It is not clear exactly what such an apparatus would look like, or how it would impact the F-35’s low radar signature and already somewhat paltry kinematics. There is also the question of airframe fatigue induced by mounting thousands of pounds of gas where it was never intended to be placed. Still, the IAF’s lust for the extended range will likely trump these concerns,” he adds.
When I go to “damning people with faint praise” school, I hope I get in the seminars taught by that guy. He did not even say “garbage scow” or “junk bucket.” He’s right, though, after a few years of hauling the trash, the airframe will probably start to have issues – which means that a few F-35s will be designated as bomb haulers. Remember when they were going to be the next-generation air dominance stealth fighter?
Israel wants developmental and operational independence with its F-35Is, including a highly controversial plan to sustain the aircraft indigenously throughout its lifetime.
This would also help Israel in the event of a major cyberattack, which could affect the F-35’s highly sophisticated computer-based avionics. This will keep Israeli F-35s potentially safer than others operated around the world.
That last point is interesting. In a nutshell, Israel: “we’re not stupid.” Israel has noticed that the F-35 supply chain management system is both a weak link (allegedly does not work for shit) and an intelligence disaster if it did work. So the Israelis, who take their computers and intelligence very seriously, are thinking about the problem. To me, it sounds as if they’re using the F-35 in a throwaway capacity – get a bunch of mileage and bomb-droppage out of them, then ask the US for money to buy some F-16s. The Israelis love their F-16s: they work.
This whole topic is pathetic: militarists bragging about how effective their toys are at dominating defenseless air-space and blowing up undefended buildings. So brave.
Undefended airspace, Why not just flange up some JU 87’s?
fusilier
James 2:24
Worst plane? Mignet Pou-du-ciel? Christmas Bullet? There’s a fairly long list you can argue over…
Just spitballing here, but … F-35???
I’m both too lazy, and too concerned of endangering my sanity, but some highly repressed portion of my psyche is wondering what it would look like if you took the IDF funding that went towards this recent bit of war crimes, and instead spent it on Hamas-equivelant munitions and staffing, but used from the Israeli positions and targeting Palestine…
maybe too cynical, but I can’t help that think that they could have acheived the same amount of infrastructure damage, but maybe with less dead children…
If anyone is really interested in the world’s worst aircraft, you might try reading
The World’s Worst Aircraft by Bill Yenne
If the Palestinians had modern fighter aircraft and antiaircraft defenses, then this would be a real test of the F-35.
I’m not sure I get that. If the idea is to hit targets in Iran, shouldn’t maneuverability and stealth be more of a concern? After all, Iran actually have an air defense and even a few F-35s shot down would be a significant loss, considering the total number and the cost.
For that matter, how effective a bombing campaign can you even keep up with these planes? According to wikipedia, Israel presently have 27 F-35s. In December 2016, it was reported that they need 40-50 man-hours of maintenance per flight hour. I don’t know if that has improved, and obviously it refers to a team of crew working simultaneously, but it still means significantly more down-time than up. At any given time, most of the planes would not be operational.
It seems to me that Israel ought to prioritize stealth, to be able to slip in and target individual installations (such as nuclear research facilities) and otherwise just hang back and defend. For that purpose, the fuel tanks are counter-productive.
Full disclosure: I have never flown a plane, I have no military training, and I have no special knowledge of either Israel or Iran. If I’m missing something, please let me know.
Reginald Selkirk@#5:
If anyone is really interested in the world’s worst aircraft, you might try reading
The World’s Worst Aircraft by Bill Yenne
Ordered. It sounds like a great toilet tank book.
lochaber@#4:
if you took the IDF funding that went towards this recent bit of war crimes, and instead spent it on Hamas-equivelant munitions and staffing, but used from the Israeli positions and targeting Palestine…
It’d be a pretty impressive fireworks display.
I’m careful not to get into the details of Hamas’ rockets (if they are Hamas’ rockets at all) – apparently in the past some of them have been old rockets for Soviet katyushas, i.e.: really nasty military hardware, though unguided. And some of them are homemade things propelled with rocket candy and exploding charges of black powder. So, it depends what they’re firing today, I guess.
The katyusha rockets would fuck the shit out of a tank, if they were fired horizontally, and horizontal fire would bypass the iron dome system’s effective zone. I’m surprised that the insurgents haven’t tried direct-fire. I mean, other than the fact that if someone kills a few Israeli military, everything in the vicinity gets killed by the Israeli response, which is fanatical, over-the-top.
The Hamas rockets are almost a carnival show. If I were a skeptical and cynical person, I would think that maybe Hamas exists to put on a show like that periodically and not do any actual damage. That would explain why their combat doctrine is really fucking lame. I feel a bit bad saying that about anyone who is putting their life on the line on a battlefield, but seriously, what do these idiots think they are going to do, suddenly overwhelm the iron dome and whack the crap out of Tel Aviv? If there were some effective raids against the iron dome systems to degrade them first, maybe, but otherwise they’re doing the same thing they did that failed before. Who do they think they are, the US Army?