What would be the advantage of Joint Strike Fighter ?

Question

Why the US government are willing to dump $1 billion or $ trillion on JSF ?

Answer 1

The only advantage so far is to feed vanity dollars to an arms contractor, or in fact, several arms contractors. It is like ultrasophisticated corporate welfare, way beyond garden-variety pork. The 'Soviet menace' that these type of vehicles were designed to thwart by showing off superior technology is long gone.

This is tragic, as it also ensures that the troops on the ground continue to get poor supplies and no Hummers. Supplies for the soldiers and marines don't come from arms manufacturers, you see, and curiously enough, there seems to be no sense of pride in equipping the troops, or loss of ego for leaving them weak and ineffective.

Answer 2

The joint strike fighter is a stealth bomber, which will basically carry 2 500 bombs and have no hard points to place missles. It's job will replace a host of air to ground attack planes. There will basically be three types. One that will be flown like the Harrier, one that will be used by the navys of the various involved countries and one used by the airforce. There is more than one country pouring money into the program.

The U.S. will probably get some money back by selling it's aging aircraft to other countries. It will also allow the U.S. to need to spend money on parts for a variety of aircraft. The bases would only need to keep one type of power plant in stock instead of 15 different power plants.

Answer 3

The F-35 Lightning II — previously known as the X-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) during its development — is a single-seat, single-engined military strike fighter, a multi-role aircraft that can perform close air support, tactical bombing, and air-to-air combat. Its development is being funded by the United States, the United Kingdom and other partner governments. It is being designed and built by an aerospace industry team led by Lockheed Martin and major partners BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman.

The JSF program was created to replace various aircraft while keeping development, production, and operating costs down. This was pursued by building three variants of one aircraft, sharing 80% of their parts:

F-35A, a conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) variant slated to replace U.S. Air Force (USAF) F-16 Fighting Falcons and A-10 Thunderbolts, beginning in 2011.
F-35B, a short-takeoff and vertical-landing (STOVL) variant slated to replace the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) AV-8 Harrier IIs, Royal Air Force (RAF) Harrier GR7/9s, and Royal Navy (RN) Sea Harriers, beginning in 2012.
F-35C, a carrier-based variant slated to replace U.S. Navy (USN) F/A-18 Hornets (A/B/C/D variants only) beginning in 2012.

Answer 4

It's NEW !

They want a generic unit they can flog all over to replace fleets of aging aircraft, like our positively geriatric F-111b's

Answer 5

you can change from the air superiority role to the tactical troop support role very easily by adding different types of weaponry as needed IE change outboard pylon missiles to smart bombs without changing racks

Answer 6

Stealth Capability, Maneuverability Supersonic speed, advance weapon capabilities.