What Would The U.S. Air Force Look Like With No F-35?

A squadron of F-35As flying over Hill Air Force Base in Utah. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Air Force)

James Hasik, The National Interest: A Trillion Dollars Saved: What Would the Air Force Look Like with No F-35?

Think about how much more could have been accomplished with just a part of that cash.

A Trillion Dollars Saved: What Would the Air Force Look Like with No F-35?

This month, the U.S. Marine Corps declared that its first squadron of F-35Bs had reached “initial operating capability”. That’s 21 years after the program first began as the Joint Advanced Strike Technology (JAST) program, 18 years after the first Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) design contracts were awarded, and yet 13 years after Lockheed Martin won the development contract for the F-35 Lightning II, way back in October 2001. It’s notable that a war started the month prior to that award. Perhaps it’s intriguing to ask what might have happened if that contract had never been signed—if, perhaps, the Pentagon had gone all-in supporting the fighting in Afghanistan (and later Iraq), and found some other solution for backfilling its aging fighter fleets.

(This first appeared in 2015.)

Read more ....

WNU Editor: One of those "what if" stories. In the meantime here is a good breakdown on how we got to where we are today .... F-35: How the Trillion-Dollar Program Got Here and Where It’s Going (Aviation Today).