Quite. The real mission of the Joint Strike Flying Piano is to spend money and act as a giant jobs program, not to build a functional weapons system.

You, sir, win teh internetz yet again. A Turduckencopter is pure GENIUS.

Then the US military can be even happier that they will have the first the cross-forces Turduckencopter!

🙂

Yeah that was pretty cool, no question.

and if we lose a single one of these F-35s, for ANY reason, there will never be any possibility of the aircraft having a positive ROI versus the sheepherders and goat fvckers that it's likely to be matched against.

Yep. The US military has painted itself into a real corner. Its dependence on high-tech whiz-bang expensive solutions to everything makes it very, very effective in battle where information asymmetry is key to victory – but totally useless in the kinds of brutal drawn-out slug-fights that future wars against non-state actors will turn out to be.

The loss of a single high-tech toy, like a Joint Strike Flying Piano, a B-2 bomber, or a supercarrier, will be a huge blow to the US military's prestige and power. But these toys WILL be beaten out by cheap and simple weapons, tactics, and ideas used by technologically backward by tactically savvy opponents.

I'm sure U.S. pilots will love going into hostile airspace in a plane that cannot dogfight, only carries two missiles, has flawed software ("here's today's software update Lt.") and has one engine.
Canuck here. One of the reasons our air force took the F-18 over the F-16 was two engines/better range/payload. When flying over vast wilderness, that second engine comes in handy.

Canada is still dragging its heels on replacing the F-18s. It doesn't want to buy the turduckens but its only other options are the Super Hornet and the Swedish fighter.
I imagine we will end up with F35s as a sop to Trump and because we're fucking Canada.

voxday.blogspot.com/2020/02/hey-at-least-it-flies.html

well then, let me add a critique to your list:

"multiple jet engines" are ( or at least should be ) a requirement for close air support.

the most dangerous part of any airplane flight envelope is slow speed + low altitude operation … the very definition of CAS.

jets don't tend to have a very good glide ratio in the first place, and the F-35 looks like the glide ratio is going to be miserable with those stubby wings.

what happens if a following plane in the flight ingests a cloud of dust or debris from the flight leader?

what happens if the engine ingests a bird?

if that engine flames out *for any reason*, the F-35 is going to turn into the world's most radar avoidant lawn dart.

under 500' AGL, the pilot is not going to have time to relight that engine. he's just barely going to have time to eject. it doesn't really matter that the craft will have redundant on board systems since it has no redundancy in motive power.

and if we lose a single one of these F-35s, for ANY reason, there will never be any possibility of the aircraft having a positive ROI versus the sheepherders and goat fvckers that it's likely to be matched against.

fortunately, the Air Force and Army seem to have figured out the stupidity of trying to cram the F-35 into a CAS role and have postponed the A-10 retirement indefinitely.

"In 2012, the Air Force considered the F-35B STOVL variant as a replacement CAS aircraft, but concluded that the aircraft could not generate sufficient sorties."

duh? duh.