The plane flies; but I wonder what we're doing putting humans in an airplane at all at this point. The amount of additional engineering that has to be done to support a human in the cockpit is crazy -- life support systems, multiple redundant flight control systems, etc. All of these have maintenance schedules, checklists and protocols that make them very expensive to operate. By the time this weapons system is operational, it will be obsolete.
I would maybe understand if the goal of this program was to produce a weapons system that was a great leap forward in performance, but the F-35 was never designed to be that. It was supposed to remove the need for 3 or 4 different specialized aircraft by creating a general-purpose platform that can serve in multiple roles. It's essentially a cost-reduction program that basically fails at reducing costs because of the additional overhead some of the requirements brought.
In its current iteration, it doesn't do that, and having a single-engine fighter jet is a colossally stupid idea. In the event of engine failure, the pilot has no choice but to eject because fighters are far less aerodynamically stable than passenger planes, and with no engine power, the plane wouldn't be controllable. You don't have these problems in two-engine fighters -- if one engine goes out, you can still limp back to base and land the plane. So your single engine has to be that much more powerful and reliable, which leads to an engine that is more expensive to buy and that needs to be maintained more often. So they ultimately fail in reducing cost and complexity.
For the roles the F-35 will be appropriate for by the time it's finished, drones will be a much better option. The F-35 is explicitly not an air superiority fighter (a role human pilots are still better suited for, and for which the F-22 is a far superior aircraft), and most of the ground support and reconnaissance roles the F-35 is supposed to play are already handled by drones today.
The program only exists because big defense programs are parceled out to congressional districts, whose representatives are loathe to lose the jobs. I don't think the military even wants it that badly at this point.
A human pilot can't be simply disconnected of reprogrammed to turn around and bomb Washington. I think that's a major consideration.
Yes, there are drones that work quite well against countries like Afghanistan but good luck using these against China or Russia. (not that I'd want to see that ever happen)
Drones, like any other aircraft, would be used only after air superiority has been established.
That means that by the time we're sending drones in, the enemy doesn't even have sufficient radar capabilities to know what planes are there. Radar sites are one of the first targets in the process of establishing air superiority because they direct anti-aircraft defenses. They wouldn't even know there are drones to hack, just that missiles are raining down from above.
If we haven't established air superiority yet, we just use cruise missiles. But a cruise missile looks a lot like a missile fired from a drone if you're standing on the ground.
Well, to be fair, a human pilot can decide to do those things on their own. Plus, most drones I'm aware of still have a human pilot, just not on board.
The F-35 started life in 1996 with the Joint Strike Fighter Program. That's almost 2 decades ago, and long before the idea of using drones instead of humans was feasible.
That doesn't mean that the F35 program shouldn't be scrapped and the useful technology used elsewhere but the program goals were reasonable when they started. Or at least not completely ridiculous... I personally think it's a bad idea to have one type of aircraft for everything because if anything happens to cause the fleet to be grounded there is nothing else to step in to fill the gap.
I would maybe understand if the goal of this program was to produce a weapons system that was a great leap forward in performance, but the F-35 was never designed to be that. It was supposed to remove the need for 3 or 4 different specialized aircraft by creating a general-purpose platform that can serve in multiple roles. It's essentially a cost-reduction program that basically fails at reducing costs because of the additional overhead some of the requirements brought.
In its current iteration, it doesn't do that, and having a single-engine fighter jet is a colossally stupid idea. In the event of engine failure, the pilot has no choice but to eject because fighters are far less aerodynamically stable than passenger planes, and with no engine power, the plane wouldn't be controllable. You don't have these problems in two-engine fighters -- if one engine goes out, you can still limp back to base and land the plane. So your single engine has to be that much more powerful and reliable, which leads to an engine that is more expensive to buy and that needs to be maintained more often. So they ultimately fail in reducing cost and complexity.
For the roles the F-35 will be appropriate for by the time it's finished, drones will be a much better option. The F-35 is explicitly not an air superiority fighter (a role human pilots are still better suited for, and for which the F-22 is a far superior aircraft), and most of the ground support and reconnaissance roles the F-35 is supposed to play are already handled by drones today.
The program only exists because big defense programs are parceled out to congressional districts, whose representatives are loathe to lose the jobs. I don't think the military even wants it that badly at this point.