this

	"Hilmar Keller, on 28 Jan 2017 - 20:47, said:
	To be fair his criticism of the F-35 is pretty on-point: The F-22 is still the cutting edge in air superiority fighter and the A-10 		is still our best asset in close ground support; why do we need an aircraft that does both jobs worse but costs a fuckload more?

	And is S/VTOL such an asset that we need it on everything?"


Your opinions suggest you don't fully appreciate what priorities really matter in terms of strategic airpower.

-The F-22 is a superlative at air superiority: true
-The F-22 is the cutting edge in air supremacy: false
-The A-10 is superlative at COIN: true
-The A-10 is superlative at killing ground targets: false
-STOVL is a fantastic asset: true
-STOVL is on everything: false

The F-35 can't be evaluated in terms of kinematics or firepower in the same way you can't evaluate a wallhack in terms of DPS.
A few short histories first to put things in context:

Air Supremacy: Priorities
 The last proper war fought against equal powers was World War 2. The most modern aircraft the US had on hand on its entry were the P-40 and P-38, which had their first flights in 1938 and 1939 -- new compared to the Bf 109 and Spitfire, which had theirs way back in 1935 and 1937, some 80 years ago! It's left a deep imprint on everyone's psyches for sure, but we can do things now we couldn't dream of 80 years ago. At a micro level, the lessons are no longer valid. However, on a macro level, the goals have never changed.

 So, what's the purpose of an air force? The immediate answer would be: to control the skies. In order to control the sky, one must achieve aerial superiority, and then aerial supremacy. What then after that though? There's no point in garrisoning the air; it doesnt produce anything and nobody lives up there. The air is simply a route you can take to get around obstacles to get at the enemy's vitals -- their infrastructure. That is at the heart of "Strategic Airpower," which was the lynchpin of US WW2 success and is still the endgoal of current aerial doctrine.
 An example of what happens otherwise was demonstrated by the Luftwaffe; they very much pursued the "aerial infantry" notion at all levels. In terms of development, long range strategic bomber designs were passed up for too long in favor of immediate air superiority; in terms of doctrine, Luftwaffe pilots were too concerned with the romance of fighter combat to bother with actually winning the war. During the desert campaigns of 1942, the Luftwaffe shot down scores of DAF fighters yet allowed DAF bombers to freely attack German troops and logistics. In terms of their own personnel logistics, the Luftwaffe was infamous for burning out aces; they deployed until they died. Distributing experience wasn't a thing; wingmen were more or less just groupies for rockstar aces. So while it led to astounding killcounts -- Erich Hartmann ended the war with 352 confirmed kills vs top US ace Richard Bong's 40 -- it created a problem where the majority of pilots comprising the Luftwaffe were rather dogshit. In the end, things obviously didn't end well for the Luftwaffe, because their plan was non-existant sucked.

 The ultimate lesson in WW2 was the superiority of the logistical over the tactical. Despite the vast differences in doctrine between US and Russia, both understood that focus on macro superiority trumped micro superiority in every case: T-34 vs Panzer, Sherman vs Panzers, P-47 vs Bf-109, F4F vs A6M. This is the root of the US "obsession" with multi-role.
To further summarize it, some forms of superiority are more superior than others, and they happen to be extremely boring ones.

The SAM: Air Supremacy, Redefined
 For most of the history of air power the only thing that could really touch airplanes were... other airplanes. When bombers are coming in at 27,000ft, it takes a very long time for flak shell to fly some 9km to try to hit; one WW2 account names 24,416 large caliber rounds fired at 720 USAAF bombers with only one kill scored. The only thing needed to achieve air dominance was to be able to drive the enemy fighters out of the sky.
This reality was shattered in May 1960, when an SA-2 shot down Gary Owens. Most people just ignore this as a political event, but for military planners the implications were enormous:

Airplanes no longer held monopoly over air dominance.

 This is super important. The SAM is to the airplane what the machinegun was to the Napoleonic formation. So long as the enemy has a SAM unit in place to contest the airspace over the objective, air supremacy cannot be established!
 For the most part, the method to deal with the SAM has been passive -- staying out of sight. The low-level penetration doctrines that came in vogue in response to the U-2 shootdown is analogous to trench warfare. They can't shoot what they can't see, right? Unfortunately, it doesn't change the fact that the threat remains, and having to run around it implies a certain loss of initiative, and initiative is fundamental to success in any sort of conflict. The ultimate goal remains air dominance -- having 100% initiative, and so we must go from avoiding SAMs to killing SAMs.
 This is a very annoying problem because something parked on the ground has a lot of advantages over something in the air. First and foremost, it's cheap. Ground units don't have to deal with all the fuel expense to push 30-50,000lbs of machinery against gravity. If a wheel or track pops off, it's not critical because it's not plummeting earthward from several tens of thousands of feet. It's cheap to camouflage SAMs in various ways, from covering it in branches to placing decoy radar reflectors on the ground. Beyond that, the ground itself offers better defenses than the air. It's harder to see things against the ground, there are hills and obstacles in the way, etc. etc. In terms of direct logistical superiority, SAMs look like a clear winner.
 The catch of course is that SAMs aren't good at anything beyond shooting down other planes. This is critical, because even though SAMs beat aircraft in terms of exchange cost, SAMs do not and can not replace aircraft -- they are an additional cost on top of maintaining an air force.
 The better solution would be an airplane that can both deal with SAMs and aircraft, as it allows for a double dip in savings: the destruction of the SAM trashes the enemy's sunk cost in maintaining their static defenses, and at the same time it avoids the cost of maintaining a friendly equivalent system.

Ever wonder why NATO only has token SAM defense compared to Russia?

F-35: Solving the SAM Problem
 Prior to the F-35, killing SAMs has been regarded as a special sort of mission unto itself, Iron Hand. It started out with Wild Weasels in Vietnam, where gutsy pilots in old, expendable F-100s would go and dance with SAM units so others could see where the missiles popped out from in order to drop a cluster bomb on it. This was every bit as looney as it sounds and they quickly decided it would be better to just use better planes (the F-4) and give them weapons they could shoot back with: antiradiation missiles. If the SAM unit could get poked in the eye, well, it wouldn't be doing any shooting.
 In response, more elaborate methods evolved to dissociate the SAM from their vulnerable targeting systems. Different radars would turn on and off like a game of whack-a-mole to prevent any one radar from getting smashed, all the while they could coordinate between each other to generate a picture. This was the beginning of networked warfare. The only real counter was intel and the skill of the pilot in maintaining situational awareness of where the threats were. During the Gulf War, Iron Hand F-16CJs still brought along unguided cluster bombs to drop by eye on Iraqi SAM units.
 In the meantime, in order to reduce reliance on terrain (which works both ways for both parties) in avoiding the SAM threat, low observable technology was introduced. This can be equated the adoption of the camouflaged fatigue. Contrary to popular belief, it's not some sort of invisibility cloak against radars. What it does is reduce the effective range of important radars, especially the ones required to generate an accurate track for a guided weapon. Frankly, militaries don't care whether or not their aircraft has been spotted, so long as they aren't being shot at.

 In combining the concepts of counter-network networking and low observability, F-35 marks the first aircraft to truly acknowledge the SAM threat not as specialized secondary mission, but as a primary threat to be capable against. The F-35's Distributed Aperture System effectively gives eyes to the airplane itself, and allows the pilot to offload processing of threats to the computer, which can now track, filter, and remember threats (so called "sensor fusion") with far more precision; even more importantly, having already been computerized, it becomes trivial to then disseminate the information to any other compatible platform, saving critical time and brainpower. The more F-35s working together, the more powerful the system becomes.
 Against the F-35, SAM radars will be free to turn on and off as they please; between networked F-35s they will be able to triangulate the location of the signals, keep them in memory, and then spatially represent them on their DAS picture for the pilot. The pilot will be free to take the time to do a visual search in that specific area instead of wasting precious time hunting through large swaths of sky. With knowledge of the spatial location of the threat, passively guided weapons can be employed, giving the enemy less chance of taking defensive actions.

 These gains are difficult to quantify in terms money, however, they are all extremely consequential. In an engagement against any missile threat where promptness is at a premium, the ability to shave 3 seconds off by not having to verbally describe the general location of the threat is far more significant to offensive and defensive success than the ability to to pull 2 more G's or 5deg/sec more instantaneous turn rate.
This has only become possible with progressively more powerful computers. For example, staring into the entire sky is no mean feat. It requires the very fast processing of terabytes of data, because the imaging must be high enough resolution to find threats that are only pinpricks at the ranges involved in air combat. In the future it will be possible to do the same with a faster and lighter package, however that future doesn't come dropping out of God's asshole; it comes by making investments today in building and operating the first generation of the technology.

Networked Combat: Slowcats All The Way Down
 Let's talk about the F-22 then. It's an air superiority fighter, in a pre-1960s sense. Yes, it can pull its nose anywhere the pilot wants it to like it's a video game, to the point that it's actually killing the pilot more than the enemy is.
 It's really great at making Su-27s nervous, but it doesn't do much beyond that. When the Flanker is going down in flames, the Buks will be shooting at the F-16s trying to JSOW the airfields and prevent more Flankers from coming up; when that happens the F-22 is about as useful as a turd. In fact, for the entire rest of the campaign, F-22s will be doing absolutely nothing beyond burning up avgas, getting paid to protect the skies against fighters that will never take off. Oh and their attendant ground crew won't be helping anyone else either.

 Is the F-35 kinematically worse than the F-22? Without a doubt, but so are the F-15, F-16, and F/A-18, and nobody seems to have a problem with those aircraft. The F-35 is meant to supersede the latter two: the eternal lightweight rivals, the F-16 and F/A-18. These two successful aircraft embody opposing characteristics: the F-16 is a fantastic sustained performer, possessing superb lift and thrust, yet losing out on alpha performance; the F/A-18 is a powerhouse in the instantaneous, with stellar alpha authority at the cost of anemic acceleration. Between them, the F-35 manages to inherit all of the good qualities without any of the bad ones; it has tremendous acceleration like the F-16, yet also improves on the F/A-18's high-alpha capabilities. As F-16s and F/A-18s already have no qualms in engaging Su-27s in exercises, it can be expected F-35s will enjoy even more confidence.
 Of course, kinematics ceased to be the deciding factor in aerial strategy long ago; it started dying with the effectiveness of boom and zoom tactics, then it died with the BVR missile, and finally it rolled over its grave with the High Off-Boresight missile. Few battlefields enjoy the effects of the N-Squared law more than the aerial warfare, because the missile is the great enabling equalizer: an AIM-120 from an F-16 is the same as an AIM-120 from an F-22, and any plane hit by either is the same sort of dead. The only difference is that the F-16, being not stealthy, can't go where the F-22 can.
 However, the F-35 can, and it's chock full of sensors the F-22 can't afford to carry. Between them they mitigate the other's design compromises: the F-35 can feed the F-22 aerial targeting data off it's optics; the F-22 can feed the F-35 its radar image. The F-22 can be delegated to difficult air targets, in return, the F-35 can address ground threats. In an aerial clash, more F-35s means a greater number of missiles per volley, and more missiles means more enemies that can be engaged per sortie. Distributing cost across more units also lessens the effect of attrition among equivalent forces. Each F-35 loss accounts for fewer missile launches lost relative to the total, compared to a force of all F-22s.
 This relationship further trickles down between 5th and 4th generation aircraft: targeting data from F-35s can be passed on to delegate launch responsibility to non-stealthy aircraft standing off with extended range missiles. The sort of proxying capabilities creates all sorts of interesting opportunities, from simply hitting something otherwise beyond reach, to having more weight of fire being available, to conserving on-station ordinance, to deceiving enemy defenses. The military dubs this doctrinal concept 'Any Sensor, Best Shooter.' As the phrase suggests, this concept goes beyond even aircraft; in 2016 an F-35 performed a successful weapon test where it remotely guided a RIM-174 surface-to-air missile.

COIN: Anything Goes
 The A-10 is a funny deal. The biggest problem with it is that it's so damn simple. It's a modern airplane built to WW2 doctrine, so it's simple to understand for the layman, unlike the F-35 and all the complicated realities of the modern battlefield. It flies low and slow so everyone can see there is an airplane in the sky, and so that the pilot can show off his Red Baron scarf. The legendary titanium bathtub is exactly the sort of stuff that would have saved Manfred von Richthofen and so is immediately appreciable thanks to Hollywood and video game drama where inevitably the hero must take some hits. The 30mm GAU-8 is spectacular, it looks vicious and it makes an amazingly cathartic noise. There is absolutely no question as to its lethality against targets that also happen to die very well to 5.56.

 Unfortunately, they are all at best useless and at worst counterproductive when the going gets tough. Flying low and slow is something that can only be done when every SAM and MANPAD has been swept away by other airplanes. The titanium bathtub will prevent the pilot from getting ventilated by 23mm shells, but it doesn't help keep the airplane in the air one bit after any sort of missile hit. The GAU-8 was already obsolete for killing MBTs when the A-10 rolled off the production lines, being unable to penetrate the T-72 from most all angles.
 A-10s were used in Desert Storm at first but were quickly pulled off the job after losing 7 airframes to SAMs and relegated to unproductive Scud hunts instead. Meanwhile, the real job of winning the war was being done by medium altitude bombing missions by F-15Es, F-16Cs, and F/A-18Cs. The British tried doing some low level airfield shenanigans with their Tornado GR1s and quickly learned the hard way; they too switched to dropping bombs from altitude. In the second Gulf War A-10s were again relegated to bitchwork, mowing down stuck traffic while fastmovers moved on to more important objectives. Still, an A-10 managed to get itself shot down by a Roland SAM half a month in.
 The A-10 isn't even the best at putting cannonfire on target. It would be very easy to make an even better aircraft for hanging around dunking on soft targets, and in fact it has been done -- it's called an AC-130, and it has a 105mm howitzer poking out the side in addition to various combinations of 40mm, 30mm, 25mm, and 20mm cannons. Other countries have solutions that fly low and slower than the A-10, propjobs like the Tucano and Pucara, and they all kill smallarms-toting targets very well. During the Nigerian Civil war MFI-9s, which are more or less like Cessna 172s, were rigged with 68mm rockets and used to good effect. In fact the US had a very good COIN aircraft of its own called the OV-10 Bronco, used during the Vietnam war, and a few were called back up to support specops in Syria.
 A-10 proponents constantly point out of the importance of being able to get eyes on the ground action. While this isn't wrong, it's also not as if the ground can't be seen 15,000ft up. It's no small irony that one of the most significant upgrades to the A-10 was the addition of targeting pod compatibility. These pods are the same used by fast strikers to drop bombs from 20,000ft! They do have uses beyond simply seeing farther of course, such as their capability to transmit aerial imagery to the ground as demonstrated in the ROVER program.

 It's no small coincidence these are all capabilities that the F-35 improves on. On top of DAS, EOTS is an integrated targeting pod; its native datalinking capabilities will inherit ROVER capability. FACs on the ground will be able to update F-35 target registry with relevant information to directly superimpose on the pilot's view. Just like in the A2A scenarios, this saves valuable time otherwise spent describing and coordinating between the different impressions from the air and the ground.
 The F-35 in every way represents an upgrade over the A-10's capabilities. It flies faster and arrives sooner; it its able to rearm and strike again sooner as well. It goes without saying that the F-35 is able to reposition to support against unexpected attacks far better than the A-10. The F-35 is able to reach into contested areas with SAM threats with far more impunity than the A-10 in order to support ground units, and it's able to do it under any condition, day or night. It is also able to reach farther. Whereas the A-10 has a paltry 250nm combat radius, the F-35A boasts a staggering 625nm radius on internal fuel. To further put it in context, the similarly sized F-16 ekes out 290nm with a bomb loadout, and the F/A-18 does somewhat better with 330nm. The F-14, known for its long range, does 500nm; with the addition of external tanks (as stealth is unnecessary once air dominance is achieved), the F-35 gets upwards of 900nm!

STOVL: Back to Basics
 The STOVL capability of the F-35B is the subject of a lot of cursing and bitter invectives, despite the fact it has demonstrated itself well. The F-35B gives up some fuel tanks for a lift fan that allows it to greatly reduce its takeoff and landing area requirements. This is a very important capability for the Marines, since their entire gig is expeditionary warfare and range is less desirable than the ability to make any spit of flatness an airbase. The reasoning is thus: As a Marine aircraft's main duty is to support ground operations, it is important to have as much ordinance available as often as possible; the closer the airbase is, the less time wasted leaving and reentering the fight for rearmament. To that end the Marine solution for the last 30 years has been to put up with the AV-8B Harrier II, the VTOL wonder aircraft, if only so because its contemporaries were such abject failures.

 The history of VTOL design has been rife with disappointments and still continues to be a topic of disappointments for most aerospace engineers. The VTOL requirement was originally conceived in the late 1950s, in a mad panic where military planners realized even the best air force was vulnerable if the aircraft were all bound to a few large airports. Two solutions presented themselves: V/STOL and variable geometry wings. Both aimed at doing the same thing: increasing airfield availability by reducing takeoff and landing lengths.
 Variable geometry was the more conservative solution, and was rapidly adopted by both sides; Russians retrofitted their Su-7s to create the Su-17, the US put out the F-111, and the Europeans caught the tail end of the boat with the Tornado. While all the variable-geometry aircraft would find success in service, the benefits were rapidly diminishing in the face of aerodynamic computational advances. Ultimately, variable-geometry was rendered obsolete by powerful engines, sophisticated airfoils, and novel lift generators.
 V/STOL was a much more radical concept that promised more significant benefits, but unfortunately plagued by mutually conflicting solutions. For example, while it's a simple task to summon enough thrust to lift off vertically from the ground via vertically oriented engines, those same engines suddenly become dead weight in forward flight. Rotating the engines runs into difficulties inside a fuselage, and outboard multiengine installations a la tiltrotors run into serious issues with engine failures, not to mention adversely impacting maneuvering performance. Tailsitters, while an elegant solution, are simple to take off in, but run into difficulties in recovery and groundside logistics. Rotating the nozzles is a more feasible concept, yet due to the length of engines, nozzles generally don't wind up anywhere near the center of gravity. Furthermore, as the intake is located closer to the ground, it is liable to ingest hot exhaust being reflected off the ground, destroying thrust output.
 Just about every nation with aircraft design capability had a stab at VTOL design, but only the British Harrier program emerged with any reasonable amount of success. At the time the Harrier's success with vectored thrust was rather unique; the US, French, Germans and Russians all were experimenting with dedicated lift engine designs instead; while the XV-4 began with lift nozzles, it ended with four dedicated lift engines; the Mirage IIIV (V for vertical, not 5) had eight. Not to be outdone, the Anglo-American CL-704 would have had fourteen (!) liftjets in massive wingtip pods. The Russians were more reasonable with their carrier-based Yak-38, with two lift engines in the front acted to counterbalance vectoring exhaust from the main engines in the rear. Once pressed into service, the Yak-38 would reveal itself to be wholly inadequate as a combat aircraft, unable to take off with any useful load outside of cold Russian latitudes. In the tropics, Yak-38s became completely deckbound as the Minsk deployed to Vladivostok.

 The Harrier forwent the lift engines and instead found its solution in the elegant Rolls-Royce Pegasus engine. Not only was did this engine have vectoring nozzles, but it was short. Furthermore it had a novel solution to create thrust output forward of the exhaust: The massive frontal compressor directly fed the forward nozzles, and incidentally created a blast of cool air between the intake and exhaust plume that shielded the engine from hot air ingestion. The Harrier was entirely built around this engine, which was placed on the center of gravity.
 Though the Harrier was a true VTOL, being able to take off in a hover with weapons, it was quickly realized that vertical takeoff was something of a superfluous requirement, and that there were far more advantages in operating as STOVL. Taking off conventionally borrowed wing lift and allowed for greater warloads in addition to minimizing the risk and inefficiency encountered during the transition from hovering to forward flight. Furthermore, while vertical landings were imperative as the only way to safely land an aircraft in a small space without resorting to thrust reversers or hooks, takeoffs were far less demanding. Finally, STOVL operation required no additional changes, as the light carriers operated by the US and RN already had deck runways regardless.
 The Marines found the Harrier concept tailor-made to their vision of CAS, but it wasn't perfect by any means. The first-generation Harriers were lacking in both combat load and range, and while the RAF sought to improve on the design with successively uprated powerplants, the Marines decided to do a redesign, handled by McDonnell Douglas as the AV-8B. These larger, more powerful Harriers arrived around 1985 and so were ready to participate in Desert Storm, where, despite suffering the second highest losses to SAM after the A-10, nevertheless acquitted themselves well enough to be deemed one of the most critical assets of the war alongside the F-117 Nighthawk and AH-64 Apache. Later during Iraqi Freedom, AV-8Bs again demonstrated the value of forward-deployed, round-the-clock CAS availability. It should be no surprise that soon after the conclusion of the Gulf War the Marines were ready for an even better Harrier.

 Such was the promise of the Harrier that as the AV-8B was in the works, DARPA went ahead and started investigating a supersonic follow-up. Lockheed Martin Skunk Works was approached regarding the feasibility of a STOVL strike aircraft that was competitive as a fighter in its own right. With VTOL capability in mind, LM spent the better portion of the 80s figuring out how to make it stealthy. Their big break had yet to come, and it would be from an unexpected source.
 It so happened that the Russians, or at least, Yakovlev OKB, had similar sentiments regarding VTOLs. In 1987, Yakovlev had rectified all the problems of the Yak-38 with their new supersonic VTOL, the Yak-41, which quietly broke many VTOL world records. Its timing was ill however, and with the fall of the Soviet Union, design bureaus all found themselves in a scramble to stay afloat and many effectively had to firesale their designs, Yakovlev among them. Lockheed had taken notice of the promising Yak-41 design and pounced with an offer to "help fund development." In 1991, for 400 million, Lockheed investigated the engineering of the Yak-41, verified its development potential, and effectively made off with all the relevant VTOL expertise Yakovlev had amassed since 1960.
 With both F-22 derived aerodynamics and Yak-41 VTOL solutions in hand, Lockheed Martin was set to meet DARPA's requirements. The resulting CALF program would attract the Marines first, and subsequently impress the Air Force as well. McDonnell Douglas(later acquired by Boeing), being the only other US company with any successful VTOL experience, would join the program to offer token competition with the X-32. The eventual result was the Joint Strike Fighter program.

 In summary, the F-35B and its STOVL capability is anything but a tacked-on component; rather it is foundational to the design family. Furthermore, the F-35B is in many regards already a proven design, both in terms of niche by way of the Harrier, and in terms of configuration thanks to the Yak-41. As the true baseline configuration for the F-35 family, the F-35B's relatively truncated combat radius is nevertheless an impressive 460nm, appreciably better than the AV-8B's 300nm, and again markedly superior to both the F-16 and F/A-18.

Coming Full Circle: Back to the Future
 Certainly the F-35 represents an improvement over every platform it seeks to improve on. What must be appreciated even more is how it managed to do it all with so few negative consequences. It's easy to declare at this point that, because of all the compromises, it indicates the F-35 was built with no goal, no specialization. That would be a very shortsighted assertion. The F-35 very much has a specialization, a specialization so strategic it transcends air power itself:

The F-35 specializes in economics.

 The F-35's true strengths are economic in its myriad definitions. It wins in logistics; part commonality represent massive savings from production, to storage, to maintenance; in minimizing uniqueness it builds resilience to infrastructural attacks. Commonality reduces costs to component designers for future upgrades. Logistics is one of the economies of war, where the F-35 delivers in spades as well: multirole capability maximizes the number of pilots and aircraft available to respond to changing objectives, increased range and speed allows fewer aircraft to be responsible for more territory, and networked situational awareness saves hundreds if not thousands of man-hours in decisionmaking time down the line. It multiplies the worth of entire militaries by acting as a bridge that allows the best sensor available to be grafted onto any weapon system available. The F-35 is economical in terms of personnel: ground crew availability is maximized, at the same time more aircraft can share a common ground crew. Politically, the F-35 multiplies the efficiency of cooperation by providing a unified system and methodology, minimizing or eliminating time wasted in coordinating operational procedures. In the process of creating a standard, it enhances the position of the US as a leader and creator of doctrine.

 The F-35 wins by shifting the cost to things easy to pay for -- money and material, in order to save on the things difficult to pay for -- men and materiel. It demonstrates a keen awareness of the core lessons learned in blood from the last great war.