Yesterday I saw a picture of a comparative analysis of the F35 and J-35 by a relevant Western lecture. It is nothing more than another old talk, repeating the comparison of the F35 with the J-20. Personally, I feel that the F35 is too tired, the F22 is about to become a burden, and other models can't help, and it has to be done inside and out.
Recently, U.S. Air Force Secretary Kendall said that the F35's engines have been overwhelmed due to its overuse, and the Air Force will spend another $36 billion on maintenance of the existing F35 in the coming decades. There are 540 F35s in the United States, and a single aircraft requires an additional maintenance fee of $66 million, which is equivalent to the price of the F35I sold by the United States to Israel. Why is the F35 overwhelmed? It's tiring!
First, the F35 "shot the wrong tire" at the beginning. It turned out to be a multi-role fighter intended to replace the F16, and the F35 did it successfully. However, for well-known reasons, the F22 was no longer reusable, so the F35 was designed to play the role of a side drum, and now it needs to come out and pick the beam. This requires it to perform many tasks that are not part of its design, including confrontation with heavy fifth-generation aircraft, so that the eyes are high, and the task is naturally extremely difficult, and how can it not be tired. For example, the Italian F35 was bitten by the Su-30SM the year before last, and the Italian pilots had no choice but to "lie flat" when they could not turn on electric warfare equipment and could not avoid it with speed and maneuver. For the last four generation aircraft, you can imagine how "tired" the F35's encounter in the East China Sea is!
The second is that the F35 is "riddled with diseases". The media reported that F35 had nearly a thousand large and small problems, and there are currently at least 840 unsolved. I heard that many "diseases" of the F35 are not intended to be "cured", so they "dragged" and owned for life, until 2080 (the United States intends to put the F35 into service until this age). In particular, the F35 also has a serious heart disease, which has affected the F35's sortie rate many times, but there is no way, at least so far, the problem of high-temperature ceramic cracks in the turbine disc of the F135 engine has not been solved. Such and such "sick work", although the attitude is correct, but can not stand "tired" ah!
The third is that the contractor owns the entire life cycle of the F35, which Kendall said was a serious mistake made by the F35 project. Kendall generalizes this to a mistake, not a problem, that it's scarier than technical and unsolvable. The reason why it is if it is that the US Air Force is unable to obtain F35 maintenance data from Lockheed Martin, thus forming a monopoly and making F35 a cash cow for the military-industrial complex. Since it is possible to shake the money, the military-industrial complex has nothing to do and toss a few more times. Between the military-industrial complex and the Air Force, the F35 improvement and maintenance scheme is still "money" in the making. In between, the F35 is difficult to "machine", which is really tiring.
Fourth, F35 is "born at an opportune time". When the F22 was born, he was alone and sought defeat, and now he is at the age of being able to eat, but when the F35 was born, it "accidentally" ran into the J-20, and it was also mass-produced. According to relevant reports, the J-20 will produce 900 aircraft, and the number of F35 purchased by the United States will not exceed 1300 aircraft; The J-20 is a heavy aircraft, various modifications have emerged some of the characteristics of the sixth-generation aircraft, what about the F35? The physique of a medium-sized machine is no longer "stuffed" and cannot "stuff" a J-20 "body type"; What's more, the J-35 also came out, its size is also larger than the F35, the aerodynamic and power advantages are also stronger, and the production number may exceed 1500 aircraft, including 1100 Air Force and 400 Navy aircraft, such a large scale, F35 will be separate, and the degree of involvement can be imagined.
Epilogue:
The F35 is tired because the Air Force is asking for too much. I want to cross the ocean to make it comparable to the J-20, and I want to use it to fight the J-35, but this is also the helplessness of the US Navy and Air Force, it only has such a fifth-generation aircraft "can be a big task", and it is not too big or small, and it cannot be compared with the five generations that have been mass-produced and are about to be mass-produced. Fortunately, the F35 still has a quantitative advantage, but with the mass production of the J-35, this advantage will also be broken, and the J-35 will compete for its overseas market. As a result, the F35 will be more tired in the future, and there will be more problems when it is tired.
F35 is too tired...! The sixth-generation aircraft that will not be known are too expensive, the production quantity is limited, and it will not solve the problem of F35 "tired"!