Pentagon, Lockheed rebut F-35 critics
WASHINGTON: The Pentagon and Lockheed Martin Corp, its largest supplier, sought on Friday to shoot down criticism of their $299 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, the costliest planned US arms buy ever.
Published reports that Russian-built Sukhoi fighter jets thrashed the F-35 in simulated dogfights last month are just flat false, Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles Davis, the Pentagon official in charge of the program, said in a teleconference hastily called by Lockheed to rebut negative publicity at a critical juncture for the program.
Development of the family of radar-evading, multi-role, single engine F-35 fighters was co-financed by Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Canada, Australia, Denmark and Norway.
Each of these countries is within a couple of months to a couple of years of making F-35 procurement decisions, and some people with unspecified "agendas" may be maneuvering, Davis said.
The West Australian newspaper reported earlier this month that F-35s had been clubbed like baby seals by simulated Sukhois at war games in Hawaii last month.
Tom Burbage, general manager of the F-35 program for Lockheed Martin, said in the teleconference, We've been able to put the issue in Australia to bed. He said Australia's prime minister had been among those troubled by the report.
Citing U.S. Air Force analyses, he said the F-35 is at least 400 percent more effective in air-to-air combat capability than the best fighters currently available in the international market, including Sukhois.
Davis and Burbage also took aim at a highly critical guest column in the September 10 issue of Jane's Defence Weekly, a trade publication, by industry-watchers Winston Wheeler and Pierre Sprey, who helped shape Lockheed's F-16 fighter.
Wheeler and Sprey tarred the F-35 as a dog, calling it overweight, underpowered and, with a payload of only two 2,000-pound bombs in its bomb bay, hardly a first-class bomber either.
As a close-support attack aircraft, they wrote it is too fast to see the tactical targets it is shooting at; too delicate and flammable to withstand ground fire; and lacking the endurance to loiter usefully over friendly ground forces for sustained periods.
In a rebuttal statement, Lockheed said the F-35 was a racehorse, not a 'dog', with unprecedented combat advantages, including the most powerful engine ever installed in a fighter.
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