https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2021/02/23/the-us-air-force-just-admitted-the-f-35-stealth-fighter-has-failed/ Explore * Billionaires + All Billionaires + World's Billionaires + Forbes 400 + America's Richest Self-Made Women + China's Richest + India's Richest + Indonesia's Richest + Korea's Richest + Thailand's Richest + Japan's Richest + Australia's Richest + Taiwan's Richest + Singapore's Richest + Philippines' Richest + Hong Kong's Richest + Malaysia's Richest + Money & Politics + 2020 Money * Innovation + All Innovation + 5G + AI + Big Data + Cloud + Cloud 100 + Consumer Tech + Cybersecurity + Enterprise Tech + Future Of Work + Games + Healthcare + Innovation Rules + Japan BrandVoice | Paid Program + Jumio BrandVoice | Paid Program + SAP BrandVoice | Paid Program + Science + ServiceNow BrandVoice | Paid Program + Social Media + SurveyMonkey BrandVoice | Paid Program + Sustainability + T-Mobile for Business BrandVoice | Paid Program + Venture Capital + Wind River BrandVoice | Paid Program * Leadership + All Leadership + Careers + CEO Network + CFO Network + CIO Network + CMO Network + CxO + Deloitte BrandVoice | Paid Program + Diversity, Equity & Inclusion + Education + Forbes EQ | Paid Program + Forbes The Culture + ForbesWomen + Google Cloud BrandVoice | Paid Program + Leadership Strategy + Splunk BrandVoice | Paid Program + Under 30 + Working Remote + Over 50 * Money + All Money + Banking & Insurance + Crypto & Blockchain + ETFs & Mutual Funds + Fintech + Hedge Funds & Private Equity + Investing + Markets + Personal Finance + Premium Investing Newsletters + Retirement + Taxes + Top Advisor | SHOOK + Wealth Management + Election 2020 * Business + All Business + Aerospace & Defense + Energy + Food & Drink + Hollywood & Entertainment + Honeywell BrandVoice | Paid Program + Manufacturing + Media + Mitsubishi Heavy Industries BrandVoice | Paid Program + Policy + Retail + Salesforce BrandVoice | Paid Program + SportsMoney + Transportation * Small Business + All Small Business + Entrepreneurs + Franchises + Small Business Strategy + Square BrandVoice | Paid Program * Lifestyle + All Lifestyle + Arts + Boats & Planes + Cars & Bikes + Dining + ForbesLife + Forbes Travel Guide + Spirits + Style & Beauty + Travel + Vices + Watches * Real Estate + All Real Estate + Commercial Real Estate + Forbes Global Properties + Residential Real Estate * Shopping + All Shopping + Gear + Health & Wellness + Home & Kitchen + Style + Tech & Electronics * Coupons + All Coupons + Purple + Squarespace + Verizon + Lululemon + AT&T + Lowe's + Brooks Brothers + Tory Burch + Dr Martens + Dell + Chewy * Advisor + All Advisor + The Best Credit Cards Of 2021 + Best Balance Transfer Credit Cards + Best Cash Back Credit Cards + Best 0% APR Credit Cards + Best Travel Credit Cards + Best Rewards Credit Cards + Best Business Credit Cards + Best Travel Insurance Companies + Best Pandemic Travel Insurance + Best Life Insurance Companies + Best Term Life Insurance + Best Car Insurance Companies + Best Personal Loans + Best Student Loans + Best Student Loan Refinance + Student Loan Refinance Calculator + Best Tax Software For 2021 + Forbes Advisor UK * Wheels + All Wheels + Best Sedans + Best Luxury SUVs + Best SUVs + Best Pickups + Best Performance Cars + Best Family-Friendly Sedans + Best SUVs & Crossovers * Lists + All Lists * Video + All Video * Newsletters + Crypto Confidential + Editorial Newsletters + Investing Digest + Premium Investing Newsletters * Forbes Magazine + All Forbes Magazine + Forbes Asia + Free Issue of Forbes * Latest + Coronavirus Coverage + Daily Cover Stories + Dark Capital + Editors' Picks + Election 2020 + Visual Web Stories * Featured + 30 Under 30 2021 + All Hands On Data - A Tableau Series | Paid Program + Bacardi Connoisseur | Paid Program + Best-In-State Wealth Advisors 2021 + BT BrandVoice | Paid Program + Data Sharing In The Covid Era | Paid Program + DNA Of Success + Ecolab BrandVoice | Paid Program + Forbes Insights with Capital One | Paid Program + Forbes Next 1000 2021 + Square BrandVoice | Paid Program + Textron Aviation BrandVoice | Paid Program + The Healthcare Revolution At Home + The Macallan BrandVoice | Paid Program + The Under 30 Drive | Paid Program + Whittier Trust BrandVoice | Paid Program * Advertise with Forbes * Report a Security Issue * Site Feedback * Contact Us * Careers at Forbes * Tips * Corrections * Privacy * Do Not Sell My Info * Terms * AdChoices * Reprints & Permissions (c) 2021 Forbes Media LLC. All Rights Reserved Subscribe | Sign In BETA This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here More From Forbes Feb 24, 2021,11:52am EST No Way Out: Why Nuclear Modernization Is Necessary (In Six Slides) Feb 24, 2021,08:00am EST To Design A Cheap New Fighter, The U.S. Air Force Should Embrace This Boondoggle Feb 24, 2021,07:00am EST Air Taxi Startup Joby To Go Public In Merger With SPAC From LinkedIn, Zynga Founders That Will Raise $1.6 Billion Feb 24, 2021,06:22am EST Gun Range Owners Vow To Fire Back If Attacked After Louisiana Shootout Feb 23, 2021,08:44am EST Robot Dog Wars: How Spot's Rampage Gets It Wrong And The Armed Robots You Need Really To Worry About Feb 23, 2021,06:00am EST Have Investors Lost Their Minds? After A Long Run Of Bad News Airline Stocks Soared On Monday Feb 22, 2021,12:10pm EST Bloomberg Assails NASA Space Launch System With Misconceptions And Faulty Logic Feb 22, 2021,08:00am EST No More Nannies--The Chinese Air Force Is Finally Training Its Fighter Pilots To Match The Americans Feb 22, 2021,07:00am EST How Drones Are Changing The Way The Israeli Army Operates Edit Story Editors' Pick|Feb 23, 2021,08:00am EST| The U.S. Air Force Just Admitted The F-35 Stealth Fighter Has Failed David Axe David AxeForbes Staff Aerospace & Defense I write about ships, planes, tanks, drones, missiles and satellites. * Share to Facebook * Share to Twitter * Share to Linkedin uncaptioned An F-35 assigned to the 356th Fighter Squadron takes off to participate in an agile combat ... [+] employment scenario at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, during exercise Cope North 21. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Duncan C. Bevan The U.S. Air Force's top officer wants the service to develop an affordable, lightweight fighter to replace hundreds of Cold War-vintage F-16s and complement a small fleet of sophisticated--but costly and unreliable--stealth fighters. The result would be a high-low mix of expensive "fifth-generation" F-22s and F-35s and inexpensive "fifth-generation-minus" jets, explained Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Brown Jr. If that plan sounds familiar, it's because the Air Force a generation ago launched development of an affordable, lightweight fighter to replace hundreds of Cold War-vintage F-16s and complement a small future fleet of sophisticated--but costly and unreliable--stealth fighters. But over 20 years of R&D, that lightweight replacement fighter got heavier and more expensive as the Air Force and lead contractor Lockheed Martin LMT packed it with more and more new technology. Yes, we're talking about the F-35. The 25-ton stealth warplane has become the very problem it was supposed to solve. And now America needs a new fighter to solve that F-35 problem, officials said. MORE FOR YOU U.S. Marines Test Ultra-Destructive New Artillery Round No More Nannies--The Chinese Air Force Is Finally Training Its Fighter Pilots To Match The Americans Air Taxi Startup Joby To Go Public In Merger With SPAC From LinkedIn, Zynga Founders That Will Raise $1.6 Billion With a sticker price of around $100 million per plane, including the engine, the F-35 is expensive. While stealthy and brimming with high-tech sensors, it's also maintenance-intensive, buggy and unreliable. "The F-35 is not a low-cost, lightweight fighter," said Dan Ward, a former Air Force program manager and the author of popular business books including The Simplicity Cycle. The F-35 is a Ferrari, Brown told reporters last Wednesday. "You don't drive your Ferrari to work every day, you only drive it on Sundays. This is our 'high end' [fighter], we want to make sure we don't use it all for the low-end fight." "I want to moderate how much we're using those aircraft," Brown said. Hence the need for a new low-end fighter to pick up the slack in day-to-day operations. Today, the Air Force's roughly 1,000 F-16s meet that need. But the flying branch hasn't bought a new F-16 from Lockheed since 2001. The F-16s are old. In his last interview before leaving his post in January, Will Roper, the Air Force's top acquisition official, floated the idea of new F-16 orders. But Brown shot down the idea, saying he doesn't want more of the classic planes. The 17-ton, non-stealthy F-16 is too difficult to upgrade with the latest software, Brown explained. Instead of ordering fresh F-16s, he said, the Air Force should initiate a "clean-sheet design" for a new low-end fighter. Brown's comments are a tacit admission that the F-35 has failed. As conceived in the 1990s, the program was supposed to produce thousands of fighters to displace almost all of the existing tactical warplanes in the inventories of the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. The Air Force alone wanted nearly 1,800 F-35s to replace aging F-16s and A-10s and constitute the low end of a low-high fighter mix, with 180 twin-engine F-22s making up the high end. But the Air Force and Lockheed baked failure into the F-35's very concept. "They tried to make the F-35 do too much," said Dan Grazier, an analyst with the Project on Government Oversight in Washington, D.C. There's a small-wing version for land-based operations, a big-wing version for the Navy's catapult-equipped aircraft carriers and, for the small-deck assault ships the Marines ride in, a vertical-landing model with a downward-blasting lift engine. The complexity added cost. Rising costs imposed delays. Delays gave developers more time to add yet more complexity to the design. Those additions added more cost. Those costs resulted in more delays. So on and so forth. Fifteen years after the F-35's first flight, the Air Force has just 250 of the jets. Now the service is signaling possible cuts to the program. It's not for no reason that Brown has begun characterizing the F-35 as a boutique, high-end fighter in the class of the F-22. The Air Force ended F-22 production after completing just 195 copies. "The F-35 is approaching a crossroads," Grazier said. Pentagon leaders have hinted that, as part of the U.S. military's shift in focus toward peer threats--that is, Russia and China--the Navy and Air Force might get bigger shares of the U.S. military's roughly $700-billion annual budget. All at the Army's expense. "If we're going to pull the trigger on a new fighter, now's probably the time," Grazier said. The Air Force could end F-35 production after just a few hundred examples and redirect tens of billions of dollars to a new fighter program. But it's an open question whether the Air Force will ever succeed in developing a light, cheap fighter. The new low-end jet could suffer the same fate as the last low-end jet--the F-35--and steadily gain weight, complexity and cost until it becomes, well, a high-end jet. If that happens, as it's happened before, then some future Air Force chief of staff might tell reporters--in, say, the year 2041--that the new F-36 is a Ferrari and you don't drive your Ferrari to work every day. To finally replace its 60-year-old F-16s, this future general might say, the Air Force should develop an affordable, lightweight fighter. Follow me on Twitter. Check out my website or some of my other work here. Send me a secure tip. David Axe David Axe I'm a journalist, author and filmmaker based in Columbia, South Carolina. * Print * Reprints & Permissions [ ]