A Tale of Two Pigs

[unhappycamper]

A Tale of Two Pigs
Winslow Wheeler | December 29, 2009

The Pentagon has a time honored tradition of assigning PR nicknames to its aircraft. The moniker of Lockheed's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is "Lightning II," named after Lockheed's glitzy but rather unsuccessful WWII fighter, the P-38. A cursory look at the record of the F-35's namesake is convincing evidence that we need to find a new name for the JSF, quickly.

The darling of the Army Air Corps in the early 1940s and of vintage fighter buffs today, the P-38 was the high tech and high cost wonder of its time. It pioneered twin engines (with counter-rotating props and turbo-chargers), tricycle landing gear, stainless steel structural components, and a radical airframe design. At a time when fighters cost about $50,000, it cracked the $100,000 mark. Even so, it got torn apart so badly in dogfights against the far smaller, more agile, faster-climbing Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs that it had to be withdrawn from the skies over Germany as a fighter -- in favor of the far more effective, half as expensive P-51. Relegated to the minor leagues of reconnaissance and ground support in Europe, mostly in Italy, the P-38 proved itself equally inadequate in ground attack; it was simply too flammable and too easily downed by rifle and machine gun fire.

Setting aside the not-so-proud history of the P-38, the Lightning II moniker is a poor fit for the F-35. Despite the F-35's whopping (and still growing) $122 million per copy price tag, the Air Force and other advocates pretend it is the low-priced, affordable spread in fighter-bombers. Though horrendously overburdened with every high tech weight and drag inducing goodie the aviation bureaucracy in the Pentagon can cram in, the Lightning II is hardly a pioneer, being little more than a pastiche of pre-existing air-to-air and air-to-ground technology – albeit with vastly more complexified computer programs. The P-38 Lightning of the twenty-first century it is surely not, especially for those who hold the P-38 in undeserved high regard.

In the interests of giving credit where credit is due, a more historically accurate moniker for the F-35 would be "Aardvark II." Aardvark -- literally ground pig in Afrikaans -- was the nickname pilots (and ultimately the Air Force) gave to the F-111 -- and for good reasons. The F-111 was the tri-Service, tri-mission fighter-bomber of the 60s, and also a legendary disaster. The F-35 is rapidly earning its place as the Aardvark's true heir.

There are astonishing parallels between the two programs.


Rest of article about the $239 million dollar F-35 at: http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,208278,00.html?wh=news

[PavePusher]

1. Camel - A horse built to Government contract.

Also see/read "The Pentagon Wars", about the development of the Bradly Fighting Vehicle.