The chairman of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee said on August 31, 2021, in pushing for more investment in smaller unmanned platforms, that upgrades in missile technology over the past few years have made the F-35 less survivable than previously expected.
Speaking at a virtual event hosted by the Brookings Institution, Rep. Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington, was quick to point out that the F-35's survivability was still "substantially higher" than other fighter jets and compared it to the F-16.
The F-16 is still the U.S. Air Force's most popular fighter, and the U.S. Air Force will use it until the 2030s, with overseas customers likely to use it until the 2070s. The U.S. Air Force and Loma have partnered to open a new production line at the Greenville, South Carolina plant to produce the F-16 Block 70/72 fighter jet, which is the F-16V for its own use in addition to export.
"But it also has some environments that it can't access because missile technology has advanced a lot since we started building it," Smith said. ”
The missiles here mainly refer to the advanced air-to-air missiles and land-based/sea-based air defense missiles of China and Russia.
Lockheed Martin, the maker of the fifth-generation stealth fighter, claimed that the F-35 was "the deadliest, most survivable, and most closely connected fighter in the world." The Air Force plans to buy 1,763 such aircraft, which will make it the Largest fleet in the Air Force.
As of May 2021, the F-35 has become the second largest fleet in the U.S. Air Force, after the F-16. The U.S. Air Force now has 283 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters in its arsenal, compared with 281 A-10s, 234 F-15C/D fighters and 218 F-15E fighters.
Smith, on the other hand, made no secret of his displeasure with the F-35 program. In March, he called the fighter a "rat hole," accusing it of costly, and in June, he lashed out at the project's high maintenance costs. Much of his criticism has focused on sustainment, an issue where cost overruns have become a recurring theme in Congress. Smith reiterated the theme on Aug. 31, noting a provision he included in the Chairman's Markup of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act issued aug. 30 that would limit the number of F-35 fighter jets the Air Force can sustain from October 2026 onwards. As of May 7, 2021, the Air Force has approximately 283 F-35s in its fleet and requires the purchase of another 48 in the FY2022 budget. The exact number of F-35s that the service can maintain will depend on how much maintenance costs in fiscal 2025 exceed the service's declared target of $4.1 million per aircraft per year.
At present, the hourly maintenance cost of the F-35 is as high as $36,000 to $33,000, which is still reduced, and it was $44,000 in 2018. By that standard, the Air Force would either reduce the number of F-35s or use them more often, and Lockheed Martin has pledged to reduce those costs to around $25,000 by 2025.
However, the question of survivability presents different challenges. In the past, the Air Force has said the F-35 "performs very well in a competitive environment" with the goal of progressing to "excellence." At the same time, the Air Force acknowledges that it is no longer possible to achieve broad control of the air in high-end conflicts, but to seek a "temporary window of superiority" in a "competitive threat environment."
In other words, the US Air Force also admitted that in the face of opponents such as China and Russia, it cannot guarantee a comprehensive seizure of air supremacy, and can only "temporarily gain superiority."
In such a drastic threat environment, Smith said, platforms like the F-35 are too big to go completely undetected. Instead, he advocates greater investment in "smaller, more viable platforms, in many cases unmanned platforms." Smith noted in particular that the concept of a drone swarm could take on some of the tasks originally envisioned for the F-35. "We've seen this in some of the battles in the Syrian and Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict," Smith said. "You have a bunch of drones that can't be detected, and they can still deliver pretty powerful blows — you can't see it coming, and it's going to take you a long time to shoot it down." That's why we're investing in this. In many ways, this can accomplish a lot of tasks that big platforms can't, because big platforms are easier to spot.
The concept of drone swarms has been on the Air Force's radar for several years, with former U.S. procurement chief boss Will Roper calling it the future of war in 2019. At the same time, the Air Force has invested in platforms to defend against such drone swarms, including a high-power microsystem that can wipe out a wide range of drones at once.
The microwave anti-drone weapon "Thor" belongs to the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) project
In addition to criticizing the F-35's survivability, Smith pushed for more competition in the project, especially when it came to engines. Pratt & Whitney's F135 engine has been at the root of lengthy repairs and delays, and both GE and Pratt are currently participating in the Air Force's adaptive variable-cycle engine transition program.
Adaptive variable cycle engine transition planning concept technology
The F-35 currently uses Pratt & Whitney's F135 engine. In 2011, the Pentagon canceled General Electric's plans to build a second engine (both on the F-15 and F-16, which also had an 'engine war'), leaving a supplier for the Department of Defense's largest procurement program. The Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy are all buying variants of fifth-generation fighter jets, as are many of America's allies and partners.
The F-35 engine wears out quickly and takes a long time to repair, resulting in an engine shortage for the F-35. As of July 8, 2021, there were as many as 41 U.S. Air Force F-35As, one F-35B belonging to the U.S. Marine Corps, another 1 F-35C from the U.S. Navy, and three fighter jets delivered to the Foreign Air Force, for a total of 46 F-35 fighter jets that had to be grounded because they had no engines.
The F-35 fighter jet uses an F135 engine
Smith said the Adaptive Variable Cycle Engine Transition Program (AETP) is primarily designed for future platforms such as the Next Generation Air Superiority Program (NGAD, or Sixth Generation Aircraft), but "these engines may also be used for the F-35." ”
General Dynamics Corporation (GE) announced the completion of the testing of the first XA100 variable cycle engine. The power technology foundation of the sixth-generation aircraft, the potential replacement object of the F-35, the core machine can even be used to upgrade the F-22, F-15, F-16 and other platforms after the reduction.
"I think we now have the ability to create engine competition in the future," he added. "We're going to push the engine to compete because that's one of the most important things. F-35 engine... The ablation rate was faster than we expected, and the repair time was longer than we expected. I think we have the ability to drive engine competition and we're going to do that. ”
In his 2022 Defense Authorization Act markup, Smith proposed directing the Pentagon's procurement chief to submit to Congress a "strategy for continuing to develop, integrate, and operate the Adaptive Variable Cycle Engine Technology Plan Propulsion System to the U.S. Air Force's F-35A fleet beginning in fiscal year 2027."
The Adaptive Variable Cycle Engine (AETP) program, which can be seen planned for an upgrade of the F-35