Journalism used to be an attempt to provide a balanced story. Unfortunately, some of the current reporting on the JSF tries to sell you a point of view that supports a pre-determined meme and we get poor quality journalism that contains known falsehoods to advance the meme.
To be clear, most of us welcome informed criticism of the JSF program but we do not condone the passing-off of known falsehoods to advance an anti-F-35 meme. The Defence Industry Daily is a good example is of passing-off of known falsehoods dating back to 2008 to continue to advance an anti-F-35 meme. They are still citing and recycling the same discredited sources, like the Air Power Australia and selling the junk science, as truths. The so called 'RAND study' or Pacific Vision has been consistently used by many idiots, like those from Air Power Australia to misrepresent aircraft capability. The names of Air Power Australia idiots are Kopp, Goon, and Chris Miles.
These jokers, which now includes the
Defence Industry Daily (Feb 10, 2013), because it recycles old, discredited mis-information as new. The following clarifications on Pacific Vision ppt are in order:
(i) It's a ppt of an exercise planning event using planning tools - it has NOTHING - repeat NOTHING to do with tactical detail about planes and their emission footprint - hence extrapolating any tactical results about any plane factored into the simulation is just rubbish.
(ii) The software used in Pacific Vision is Falconview, which is a planning tool and most people from advanced countries are familiar with using software for defence planning. Falconview does not deal with aircraft capability comparisons. For clarity, there is a software that compares the effectiveness of aircraft in air combat BUT IT IS NOT Falconview. Therefore when morons start quoting pointy combat effectiveness based on Falconview, it is based on a complete misunderstanding and comprehension of the software used.
(iii) There are no unclassified RAND reports on JSF combat effectiveness. Lockheed Martin had defended F-35's JSF agility against critics and in the past but these critics just recycle the same meme.
What can you say to idiots who insist that Pacific Vision tells you about F-35 combat effectiveness in an air to air role? None of the clowns who use Pacific Vision as proof that the F-35 sucks are able to comprehend that the basis of their excited claims were based on junk military science. Pacific Vision has nothing to do with pointy platform effectiveness. It is sad to see clowns that are still trotting it out as proof of life of their own biases and yet it's been demonstrated time and time again that they are technology and systems luddites (see this
DT thread where this was explained by GF, a while ago and even other
blog posts the effectively discredit the ideas presented in the meme).
Honest people have real concerns about the progress of the JSF program but these concerns do not fit the usual meme. For example, the price tag of the F-35 continues to come down with each jet purchased, but there are many variables influencing the numbers. When the Turkish government delayed buying two airplanes from the seventh production batch to the ninth, the price of the remaining F-35s in the seventh production lot went up US$1 million each (and cited in
Air Power 101 for New Members).
It's too early to celebrate as it is still under testing (to see if there are more problems) and we'll just have to keep a look-out for news as the programme develops. It's a complex program with ambitous goals with global partners. Nothing about it is simple. But some things that appear on mainstream media on the JSF is just not true - as many reporters fundamentally did not take the trouble to read up.
