ANTIWAR

F-35A Joint Strike Fighters in Flight

The F-35 Lightning II “Joint Strike Fighter” is destined to go down in military history as arguably the most ill-conceived, incompetently engineered, and combat-ineffectual large-scale production aircraft of the jet propulsion era.

It is notoriously under-powered, cripplingly frail, and fatally under-armed.

Its maintenance requirements are so onerous as to render it a net liability in the context of a major air campaign against a peer adversary. For every hour of flight, it requires at least 20 hours of maintenance, including frequent engine swap outs because its feeble powerplant basically fries itself after a few hours of high-demand conditions.

With a full weapons and fuel load, the F-35 struggles to achieve Mach 1 speeds.

Its internal weapons bay can carry only FOUR units.

Fewer than 450 of all types have been delivered to the US military (~300 F-35A to the US Air Force; ~100 F-35B to the US Marine Corps; ~30 F-35C to the US Navy).

Peace-time “Full Mission Capable” rates: F-35A: ~35%; F-35B: ~15%; F-35C: ~30%.

This means that the entire global US air fleet could launch fewer than 130 F-35s at any given time. Under high-intensity conflict conditions, the “full mission capable” rates would likely be reduced by half or more after just a single combat sortie.

In the context of an air campaign against Russia in Eastern Europe, it must also be understood that the US simply does not have sufficient basing and maintenance capabilities in the region. In order to supply the logistical requirements of a major air fleet at war, it would be necessary to transfer the equivalent of a half-dozen fully staffed and equipped Hill Air Force Bases to the vicinity of the battlefield – this is of course an impossibility.

So people who talk about the US humiliating the Russians with overwhelming “5^th Generation Air Power” are spouting ridiculous nonsense. The reality is that any US air campaign against Russia would be fought almost exclusively with decades-old 4^th generation platforms going up against best-in-class Russian air defenses and a significantly upgraded Russian Air Force that would outnumber and outrange US air frames in the theater.

And those aircraft that survived the initial strike mission would discover their bases had been blasted to pieces in their absence.

As I have written on several occasions over the past few years: The US could not win an overseas war in a non-permissive environment against a peer-adversary – least of all against the Russians. It would be a logistical power projection challenge well beyond the current capabilities of the American military.

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— Will Schryver

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