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Pentagon: F-35 won’t have a chance in real combat
Three F-35 Joint Strike Fighters (Reuters/Lockheed Martin/Darin Russell)
Fatal flaws within the cockpit of the US military’s most expensive fighter jet ever are causing further problems with the Pentagon’s dubious F-35 program.
Just weeks after a fleet of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighters was grounded for reasons unrelated, a new report from the Pentagon warns that any pilot that boards the pricey aircraft places himself in danger without even going into combat.
In a leaked memo from the Defense Department’s director of the Operational Test and Evaluation Directorate to the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Pentagon official prefaces a report on the F-35 by cautioning that even training missions cannot be safely performed on board the aircraft at this time.
“The training management system lags in development compared to the rest of the Integrated Training Center and does not yet have all planned functionality,” the report reads in part.
In other sections of the lengthy DoD analysis, Operational Test and Read more…
Update of Chinese Naval and Military Buildup
Seaborne commerce is an essential part of Chinese trade. According to recent Chinese statistics published in the 2010 China’s Ocean Development Report, ocean commerce in 2008 alone represented 9.87 percent of China’s gross domestic product, with a valuation of nearly 3 trillion RMB (approximately $456 billion). Moreover, some 85 percent of its international trade moves by the sea lanes.
China became the world’s largest shipbuilder in 2010, eclipsing long-time leader Read more…
Gates: Cutting Defense Means More ‘Risk,’ Fewer Missions
Robert Gates’ final defense policy speech in Washington turned out to be a challenge to his boss. President Obama has a goal of cutting $400 billion out of the Pentagon budget over the next 12 years. To do that, Gates says, the armed forces are going to have to stop taking on certain roles — and the country is going to have to accept the “additional risk” that comes from a pared-back military.
You see, Gates already killed the Army’s gazillion-dollar Future Combat Systems and the Marines’ “swimming tank” troop transporter. He stopped the production lines for the F-22 Raptor stealth jets. Then he and the services wrang out another $78 billion over four years for future spending.
The result? All the “low hanging fruit” in the defense budget have “not only been plucked, they Read more…
Who has the fastest warplane? Russia tests another supersonic T-50 fighter.
Russia today tested a second prototype of its Sukhoi T-50 fighter, a fifth-generation warplane that is said to be comparable to the US F-22Raptor.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin walks after inspecting a new Russian fighter jet after its test flight in Zhukovksy, outside Moscow, June 17, 2010. The new jet, Sukhoi T-50 fighter, is Russia’s response to the US F-22 Raptor.
Russia successfully tested a second prototype of its revolutionary new “fifth-generation” fighter plane Thursday, a futuristic, ultrafast, and stealthy warbird that may be in the possession of the Russian Air Force by 2013.
If Russian claims about the Sukhoi T-50 multirole fighter are true, then Read more…
China J-20 STEALTH FIGHTER VIDEO FOOTAGE
Robert Gates, the US defense secretary, recently said China would be able to produce a combat jet by 2020, but if the video is genuine, it would suggest that it may be able to do so a decade or more sooner.
The photographs come amid growing fears over China’s rapidly-expanding military capabilities. Naval experts have expressed concern over the Dong Feng-21D ballistic missile, which is designed to target aircraft carriers in mid-sea – thus denying the United States its traditional military dominance of the Pacific.
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