The Briefing Room
General Category => Military/Defense News => Topic started by: rangerrebew on December 27, 2016, 10:50:32 am
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Trump Tells Twitter He Wants A Super Hornet With F-35 Capabilities
By: Valerie Insinna, December 22, 2016 (Photo Credit: Airman 1st Class Joshua King/US Air Force)
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump again took to Twitter on Thursday to question the cost of the F-35 fighter jet, advocating for modernization of a fourth-generation Boeing alternative that experts say would not likely be possible.
“Based on the tremendous cost and cost overruns of the Lockheed Martin F-35, I have asked Boeing to price-out a comparable F-18 Super Hornet!” he tweeted at 5:26 p.m. EST.
http://www.defensenews.com/articles/trump-tells-twitter-he-wants-a-super-hornet-with-f-35-capabilities
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Donald Trump's Dream Fighter Plane Is Just That
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/news/a24482/donald-trumps-f-35-f-18/
Dec 22, 2016
There is no "comparable" F-18 to the F-35.
In his attempts to be seen as a cutter of bureaucratic waste, Trump has found an easy target in defense programs. First came the new Air Force One (which the U.S. does need), and then Trump was on to the F-35. The president-elect is correct, of course, that the Joint Strike Fighter is a bloated, delayed, mess of a program. But the rest is a bit trickier.
The big problem with the incoming POTUS's latest communique by tweet is that there is no such thing as a "comparable" F/A-18 to the F-35. For one thing, the F/A-18 doesn't have the stealth profile of the F-35, something even its enormous budget cannot take away from it. The Super Hornet is a 1990s update of the original F-18, which entered service in the early 1980s. Boeing (which merged with original F-18 maker McDonnell Douglas) made numerous updates to the design. But this is an aging platform, and while Trump can ask Boeing how much it would cost to upgrade the Super Hornet even more than it already has been, there are limits to what can be done.
The second big piece is the "joint" in "Joint Strike Fighter." The Air Force, Marines, and Navy are all planning to use F-35 variants. The Navy's F-35C is built for aircraft carrier landing, something the F/A-18 already can do. But the Marines' case is problematic because they'll be using the vertical-takeoff-and-landing F-35B. There is no VTOL version of the F/A-18....
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His IGNORANCE is on FULL display here...
@thackney is pretty much spot on...the F18 would have to be redesigned almost from the ground up...the shell is about all that would be left to start with.
Integration of the systems would be near impossible...
The program is getting costs down, each successive lot is getting cheaper as manufacturing costs are driven down.
If he wants the hundreds of contractors/vendors to work even more strenuously to reduce costs, the SMART thing to do is to talk with them. Not hang them in effigy in the public square for the mob...TOS is a classic example of what I'm talking about.
By the way, this about the 3rd time I've seen this SAME "tweet" used in an article around here since the 22nd of Dec...just sayin'. :whistle:
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http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a24431/the-f-35-is-getting-cheaper-but-the-f-35-program-is-growing-more-expensive/
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I want a cow that gives chocolate milk and poops gold too
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He may as well demand a cool flying aircraft carrier like the one in the Avengers flicks.
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He may as well demand a cool flying aircraft carrier like the one in the Avengers flicks.
I hope he doesn't think of that.
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He may as well demand a cool flying aircraft carrier like the one in the Avengers flicks.
Worse, he would demand it for the price of a tugboat..
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Worse, he would demand it for the price of a tugboat..
:silly:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MWoMmlROBs
I would like a trip to Europe.
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I think we should have just elected Duck Dodgers as President.