Top 5 F-35 Fighter Jet Facts

Visibility has always been a challenge in fighter jets. Previous generations of planes have sometimes had multiple screens showing real-time imagery from four different directions. But the custom-fitted $400,000 F-35 helmet show real-time imagery from infrared cameras all around the plane in a seamless augmented reality display, effectively allowing the pilot to see right through their own plane. The display also shows them targeting information and interfaces with the communications system. Congratulations, military, you’re one step closer to being Iron Man.

In 2001, the prototype of the F-35, the X-35, was named as the victor of the Joint Strike Fighter Competition, which was created to find a replacement to multiple aircraft, including the F-16 fighter, the low altitude  ground support A-10, and vertical takeoff enabled harriet jets. As such, it’s a sort of Swiss Army knife for multiple branches of the US military. It is designed to perform bombing missions, support ground troops and perform well in dogfights. In theory, the F-35’s versatility should change the rules of modern combat. But critics like defense analyst Pierre Sprey are skeptical of this jack-of-all-trades concept. Sprey argues that the technical requirements of each role are so inherently different that trying to design one plane to meet them all will only result in an expensive, mediocre flying lemon. Those critics might be right, but unfortunately, as civilians we don’t have access to the full range of test flight results, so we won’t know for some time.

Sprey is at least right about the expensive part. You know a plane is going to break the bank when even the helmet costs $400,000. But for the craft itself – for the actual F-35 – the price depends on the desired model. The conventional F-35 for Air Force purposes will cost 98 millions dollars – that’s  called the F-35A. The B version is capable of short takeoff and vertical landing and goes for $104 million. Finally, the carrier-based F-35 is valued at 116 million dollars, a little more due to something called “LiftSystem,” which allows for vertical takeoffs. This is a huge plus when being deployed from a carrier vessel. Compare these prices to the F-16s, which these jets are designed to replace. According to Time magazine, the Pentagon stopped buying F-16s in 1995 and paid an average of only $17 million each.

Well, I guess the one result of all that spending is that a lot of people get paid. The plane’s official website– yup, weapons have websites!– claims that it creates or supports jobs for nearly 150,000 people in the 45 different states and Puerto Rico.  In fact, nine international partners initially banded together for heightened global security: the United States, Canada, Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Turkey, the United Kingdom and Italy, which is home to one of the two Final Assembly and Check Out facilities beyond U.S. borders. The other is located in Nagoya, Japan. Rather than seeing this international, multi-state involvement as a positive thing, some critics of the project say that spreading out the workload is just Lockheed Martin’s way of making sure that it will never get cancelled, which is a legit concern because...

Despite the international cooperation and the mind-boggling technology of the F-35 program, the fact remains that it’s still years behind schedule and wildly over the original budget, as in 163 billion dollars over budget. Congress was not happy. The original delivery date for 1013 F-35s was 2016. Less than 200 had been delivered as of April 2016. Some have charged that Lockheed-Martin’s system of concurrent flight testing and production is a recipe for expensive retrofits. A 2016 Government Accountability Office report noted that defects in the computer “brain” could mean increased costs of up to $100 billion more, pushing the entire project to $500 billion. Perhaps that’s just the cost of security.
 
What do you think, will the F-35 improve global security? Or is it just a massive expensive boondoggle? For more jack of all trades top 10s and master of none Top 5s, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com