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China-Japan-Koreas

F-35K Fighter Jets to Be Poorly Armed

2014-10-18

Only about half of the Air Force's next-generation F-35A fighter jet, which cost a hefty W121 billion, will be fully armed due to lack of combat weapons (US$1=W1,062). Seoul decided to buy 40 F-35As at a total cost of W7.34 trillion last month and claimed that would allow the Air Force to "overwhelm" North Korea.

But it has bought only half the weapons needed for the F-35As in a war, according to Air Force data submitted to Saenuri Party lawmaker Song Young-keun Wednesday.

The Air Force has secured a mere 45 percent of air-to-air missiles that would be used against North Korean fighter jets and only 75 percent of the required number of air-to-ground missiles. This suggests that the Air Force could mobilize at most 18 F-35As for air-to-air combat and 30 for air-to-ground combat in a war.

Each F-35A is armed with various weapons, including AIM-120 and AIM-9 air-to-air missiles and GBU-12, GBU-31 and GBU-39 air-to-ground missiles.

"We couldn't afford to pay attention to how to arm the F-35As because we concentrated on buying 40 of them," an Air Force officer admitted.

Some 66 percent of the budget for the epically delayed fighter project were spent on buying the fighter aircraft, with a mere 8 percent spent on weapons and equipment. The military is also under fire for deciding to buy only one backup engine for the 40 jets rather than the usual four to six or 10 to 15 percent spare.

They're beginning to act like Y'urp-peons...

Posted by:Steve White

#6 The bit about the lack of engine spares is a little disturbing. OTOH, I would imagine Korea has a lot of F-35 compatible weapons already, since it's compatible with most of the air-to-ground stuff in their inventory for their F-16's and F-15's.

Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2014-10-18 14:43

#5 The F-35 has a cannon, it's a slightly modified version of the 25mm cannon the Marines were using on the Harrier. It's built in on the Air Force and Navy version, and on some sort of pod on the Marine version.

Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2014-10-18 14:40

#4 If it's sort of like the Phantom it'll be fine.

Posted by: Shipman 2014-10-18 13:53

#3 Each F-35A is armed with various weapons, including AIM-120 and AIM-9 air-to-air missiles and GBU-12, GBU-31 and GBU-39 air-to-ground missiles.

Sort of like the F4 Phantom, designed without a cannon?

The F-4's biggest weakness, as it was initially designed, was its lack of an internal cannon. For a brief period, doctrine held that turning combat would be impossible at supersonic speeds and little effort was made to teach pilots air combat maneuvering. In reality, engagements quickly became subsonic, as pilots would slow down in an effort to get behind their adversaries. Furthermore, the relatively new heat-seeking and radar-guided missiles at the time were frequently reported as unreliable and pilots had to use multiple shots (also known as ripple-firing), just to hit one enemy fighter. To compound the problem, rules of engagement in Vietnam precluded long-range missile attacks in most instances, as visual identification was normally required. Many pilots found themselves on the tail of an enemy aircraft but too close to fire short-range Falcons or Sidewinders. Although by 1965 USAF F-4Cs began carrying SUU-16 external gunpods containing a 20 mm (.79 in) M61A1 Vulcan Gatling cannon, USAF cockpits were not equipped with lead-computing gunsights until the introduction of the SUU-23, virtually assuring a miss in a maneuvering fight. Some marine corps aircraft carried two pods for strafing. In addition to the loss of performance due to drag, combat showed the externally mounted cannon to be inaccurate unless frequently boresighted, yet far more cost-effective than missiles. The lack of a cannon was finally addressed by adding an internally mounted 20 mm (.79 in) M61A1 Vulcan on the F-4E.[48] - wiki

Ground support platform? And they're retiring (again) the A-10. How about just moving ground support entirely over to the Army along with the manpower and resource allocations.

Posted by: Procopius2k 2014-10-18 08:56

#2 Remember this phrase: "Ground attack jet".

Posted by: ed in texas 2014-10-18 07:57

#1 And we were expecting what?

I'm beginning to empathize with the prototypical '60's Soviet citizen..but with a nicer TV.

Posted by: Jumbo Clase4730 2014-10-18 00:37

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