Their stealthy fighters were just much more basic.
No arguments here. I think the Marines could have made do with a Harrier 3 solution. Was the AV-8Bs that much involved in deep interdiction that the aviators found LO desired? I was always more impressed by their ability to conduct CAS.
Were the ASTOVL aircraft really lighter and more basic? I don't see what capability USMC cuts off F-35B, and that's very much the variant driving both A and C
As far as i can tell it only adds requierments and size to the aircraft
But you trade range, stealth and probaly destructive power for it. JSM around half the range of lrasm which means we have to get closer
The more the merrier as far as I’m concerned. The more capacity and competition the better, even for comparable products. And if some of the become notably cheaper or better, then all the more so.
Unit cost is modestly better, for a notable performance decrease and the added costs/complications of adopting an additional weapon. F-35 integration is a given but there would still be a lot of costs associated with adoption. The current cheap bulk enabler for long range AShM is MALD-N, which should already be in service (LRIP contract for 250 in 2021). Price per unit is not clear but MALD-J is in the $200,000-300,000 range, so a large multi year MALD-N buy is probably an order of magnitude cheaper than JSM. There was a sole source contract for a billion dollars to RTX a year or two ago that I highly suspect was the production buy for several thousand MALDs.
Yeah, but it doesn't really make sense now does it
The JSM is a good value and a pretty good weapon given its unique ability to be deployed from the F-35A IWB. And it doesn't compete with the JASSM for production like LRASM does.
I don't think I or anyone realistically claimed that the JSM is a competitor to JASSM. Its being bought by those buying it as an anti-ship missile. We're buying it because its going to be integrated with F-35A and the LRASM inventory is shared with other platform and probably because it won't fit inside the F-35. The combination of JSM, and AARGM-ER / SiAW should become quite popular with F-35A users given performance and IWB compliance. Of course these will begin picking up volumes in the coming years as block-4 capability is fielded. They were not an option for the baseline F-35 3F configuration which explains limited demand then.
Stealth cruise missiles getting destroyed by fighters? Possible but unlikely.
You're underestimating the number of JASSMs and the difference between theory and practice. In theory Russia's air force should have been able to shoot down the relatively limited number of Storm Shadows sent to Ukraine, in practice they got through. The detection range for stealthy cruise missiles at low altitude is surprisingly limited.
Ugh, then what fighters are even for?
Just look at Yemen , it getting missiles trough and US is even shoting down its own fighters in the process and there is no tech or stealth in or airforce in Yemeni arsenal , and absolute air coverage with radars by western forces and Israel is most densely covered plot of land in terms of AD systems. Missiles will always go trough just imagine if they ever started flying somewhere in the west with non existing AD coverage.
???
The bad news is they admit they can't afford it.
They must afford it if USAF don't want to be the second Air Force behind China for the 21 century and more.
Not so dire, and China has problems of its own. There are plenty of contemporary and historical arguments for alternative routed to our procurement policy, and we don't have much choice even if the arguments were not persuasive (and I think they are). Things are going to change. They have to. Get used to it.
shooting down bombers before they drop the cruise missiles.
They're both right. We should divest the F-22 as soon as possible to use that money on future programs, and we shouldn't do it until they've demonstrated that NGAD can deliver an affordable airplane in numbers that lets them retire the F-22.
